When Andreas Murkudis moved his concept store to West Berlin last year, the media announced “the end of Mitte”, even the New York Times ran a story calling it the final kiss of death to the once cool district, now taken over by mainstream chains with their drab stone washed denims. The end of Mitte it’s not. In fact, all you need to do is stay clear of Münzstraße and go explore the not-so-linear Linienstraße. Especially now that it has become home to one of Berlin’s most exciting retail arrivals in a long time.
On Sunday 15 of January, when oddly enough it wasn’t snowing, around 250 people thronged into the new COMME des GARÇONS store at No.115 Linienstr. Considering Rei Kawakubo’s iconoclastic fashion brand invented the notion of the “guerilla store” in Berlin, back in 2004, the opening seems in some ways like closing a circle: it isn’t though, according to Ms. Karakubo’s husband Adrian Joffe, whom sleek met for coffee the next morning. “It’s an on-going journey and process,” he said. “The very first time we came here we were inspired by Berlin, and we’ve always liked the energy in Berlin.”
CdG never do things by the traditional retail-book. In fact they effectively rewrote the manual for direct-to-customer fashion “experiences.” Accordingly, the new location is two shops in one, each offering distinct sub-brands: to the right is the austere, black-walled showroom for CdG’s Black label, while to the right, in a separate room of this former gallery, is the Pocket Shop, selling the label’s signature wallets, Tees, scents and accessories. “Berlin is the first place in the world where they’re together,” Joffe said. “They normally have different function – our Pocket Shop in Paris is no bigger than one room, so this is the biggest Black Shop, and the only Pocket in a Black shop.”
The hallmarks of Kawakubo’s matchless sense of detail and juxtaposition are there in the fittings: in the Pocket Shop, a gazebo-like wooden frame sits inside the white-walled room, though it is skewed, and its beams lie out of parallel with the sides of the room. An ersatz corner of the frame even protrudes into the adjacent “Black” space, as if it had been built through the separating masonry wall. Only at Comme des Garçons… The store came to be after its manager, Christian Weinecke (who ran the original Berlin guerilla store), was asked by Joffe if he would like to do something new in Berlin. “I said, ‘it’s a place we like a lot,’”, Joffee recalled. “Since then we had these new idea for a shop – Pocket Shop and Black. The premises are bigger than we thought for the Pocket Shop, so we said why don’t we do something with both of them?”
This beautiful and playfully amusing shop is what resulted. In some ways it’s an art piece in itself, which means it fits in rather well in the gallery-heavy streets south of Torstrasse.
“The space lends itself to [Rei Kawakubo’s] aesthetic, it’s minimal and you’re free to do whatever you want within the space, at the same time as respecting the space,” Joffe said. “That’s why we left it to Christian to design within the parameters of the Black Shop – it has to have black walls – and the Pocket Shop, which should look like a convenience store. We gave him the freedom to design and each thing has to have its context. It’s very important for us. You have to respect the space that you’re in and the surrounding area – it’s all very important.”
COMME des GARÇONS Black & Pocket Shop, Linienstrasse 115, 10115 Berlin. Tel: +49 30 2809 5880.