Comme des Garçons Aoyama

The Comme des Garçons flagship at 5-2-1 Minami-Aoyama remains one of Tokyo's clearest proofs that radical fashion needs radical rooms. Future Systems, the British practice of Jan Kaplický and Amanda Levete, took a plain existing building in 1998 and joined its two concrete slabs with ribbons of conically curved, inclined glass that converge into a liquid entrance. The glass carried a screen of translucent blue dots, filtering the interior into something you half-saw from the pavement, and the dot pattern became a house motif in its own right before a 2012 renovation stripped it back to clear glass. The curved form stayed. Rei Kawakubo worked on the interior with Takao Kawasaki, partitioning a shop of only about 100 square metres with glass walls so the sightlines never quite settle. Kaplický died in 2009 and Future Systems dissolved with him, which makes this one of the few places left to read that practice at full strength. House stock fills the floor: mainline, Shirt, Homme, and related lines by season, with the surrounding Minami-Aoyama blocks holding further Comme des Garçons rooms if you want the complete circuit. Published hours typically run 11:00 to 20:00 daily; confirm on the company store list before a tight appointment. Omotesando Station (Ginza, Hanzomon, Chiyoda) exits put you within a few minutes' walk. A footnote worth carrying: Levete later built Central Embassy in Bangkok under her own practice, so two of the more ambitious retail buildings in this address book come from the same hand.