Experiences of fashion in the modern age of 2018 should be beautiful escapisms from a world where reality happens. From the runways of recent Fashion Weeks around the world, between Donald Trump’s election, the #MeToo movement, Women’s Marches throughout the world and all other heavy actuality, fashion was used to voice out opinions and express the longing for freedom. Dior’s ‘We Should All be Feminists’ t-shirts are now a staple of the upper-class street dwellers, and  Chanel’s ‘Make Fashion Not War’, ‘History is Her Story’ and ‘Tweed is Better than Tweet’ is another example of the participation shown by designers in protesting injustices that are resurfacing after years of suppression. An escape -- a sublime and glorious escape-- into the world of fashion is what we hope to find at Dover Street Market Singapore. With the promise of all beautiful fashion pieces we could only see on Instagram, we go inside the old but down-to-earth building which housed the gorgeous pieces of clothes one dreams to own. As we walk through the front door,
the view changes drastically.

            DSM Singapore is a maze of fashion gloriousness as the wall of
comme-des-garcons x Converse greeted us with their iconic red hearts on black and white canvas; a cheerful assurance of the fantastical world of modern fashion that’s to come. Tall, netted metal structures stood as utilitarian partitions between brands, and as such; the world that they represent. The next thing that’s visible to any crowd is what will probably shock them too, because an endless array of wrinkled clothing hung in front of our eyes, and what an awful display that was. Beautiful and smooth cotton, perfectly produced welt pockets, perfectly constructed two-piece sleeves, all of comme-des-garcons , are very clearly wrinkled and hung. At first one may think it is the way Kawakubo had intended it to be, but it was too strewn, too half-hearted, too lackluster to be so. We see Jacquemus with their latest La Bomba sleeveless draped cream dress, and Balenciaga with the effortlessly cool sliders. We see Thom Browne pieces hung on a marble stone background, and we see Gucci standing out like a delightfully sweet sore thumb with the brand’s signature maximalist aesthetic. Inside the deeper parts of the store once again we see CDG’s display, and once again we are disappointed as the apathetic wrinkles are an assurance that the fault was, in fact, DSM Singapore’s and not Kawakubo’s.

             The way the store is mapped out makes a fantastical illusion that we are lost in the beautiful maze of the fashion world, where absolutely amazing pieces are literally just a touch away. The promise of a beautiful escape from an anarchic outside world was nipped in the bud as quickly as it was given to us. Between the cool monochrome exterior, the slouchy-but-edgy music and the brands that are available, Dover Street Market Singapore presented itself to us in a thrilling, multisensory fashion experience that would have been out of this world
had they not forget to iron their clothes.