Visitors to Nordstrom’s stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Vancouver might be surprised about what they find in the retailer’s Space section. Rather than a designer collab or a selection of interesting home items, Space is offering something new to the department store: Dover Street Market.
The link-up between retailers not only has the potential to introduce the check jerseys of Guadalajara’s Liberal Youth Ministry or the collaged tops of Singapore’s Youths in Balaclava to new audiences, but also to set the groundwork for a more collaborative and agile retail landscape, where stores work together rather than compete for product.
“We want to support other retailers and other fashion brands, just as much as we want our own retail to succeed,” Kim says. “Dover Street has this incubator platform where they’re supporting and creating viable businesses for young and emerging global fashion designers, who all have these compelling, interesting, and awesome messages. We support all of that at Nordstrom—and we don’t just live in this bubble where we’re Nordstrom and all this stuff has to come through us.
Will other stores pick up the mantle and launch retailer-to-retailer collaborations? They might be crazy not to. “The openness to try something new and to learn something new is one of the silver linings that has come out of the past year,” Kim says. In a time when the fashion industry is striving to connect with customers and support itself, trying something new might be the only path forward.