Post by Arakias on Dec 22, 2004 22:41:26 GMT
Went down to the BAPE store in Soho NYC yesterday, picked myself up a pair of Green and Black shoes that are NYC exclusive color. Someone (not me) has his up on sale on ebay (search "bape sta nyc"). I plan to wear mine.
Address is 91 Greene Street (next to La Perla and a couple blocks from Broadway)
Here is an article from NYTimes from Dec 19th 2004: (you need to sign up to view the link and it costs money after a week so here is the whole thing (long)
www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/fashion/19NIGO.html
SoHo Runs for Blue and Yellow Sneakers
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE
IT was not the chic designer dresses in the entrance of the Kirna Zabête boutique or the lingerie-clad mannequins of La Perla that stopped foot traffic on Greene Street in SoHo last Monday afternoon, but something a bit more, ahem, pedestrian: sneakers. Twelve pairs — in vivid, whimsical color combinations like robin's-egg blue and yellow and Baskin-Robbins pink and brown — were circling around in a storefront window on what looked like a miniature baggage carousel, and a small crowd of hipsters and tourists had gathered to watch.
"Those right there are the hottest ones," said one wide-eyed young man, pointing at a pair in lime green and black. He and his fellow gawkers were standing in front of the first American outpost of A Bathing Ape, the urban street wear chain that has been wildly popular in Japan for over a decade, the day after the store's opening. It was a scene that Nigo (pronounced NEE-go), the soft-spoken, 33-year-old designer behind the Bathing Ape line and Japan's reigning king of cool, had seen many times before. "They're like eye candy," he said of his creations.
The SoHo Bathing Ape is the 16th store in Nigo's ever-expanding empire, which began in 1993 as a hole-in-the-wall T-shirt shop in the Harajuku district in Tokyo and now includes clothing outlets across Tokyo and in Kyoto, Osaka and London.
Five years after Nigo started selling T-shirts, he began to expand his range, first opening a sneaker emporium called Footsoldiers, and then a burger joint called Bape cafe (Bape being the abbreviated form of Bathing Ape), the hair salon Bape Cuts and an art gallery. Four more Bape stores are scheduled to open in Japan in 2005, and there is serious talk of a Bape hotel. Time Asia recently honored Nigo with an Asia's Heroes award for being an "internationally famous arbiter of style." But judging from the customers that Bathing Ape continues to attract in Japan, none of this growth or attention — not even collaborations with Pepsi and MAC cosmetics — has put a dent in the brand's street credibility.
The T-shirts, hoodies and ball caps that first brought Nigo success, and that continue to be the staples of his line, are not particularly distinctive. (Many feature camouflage prints or the brand's signature ape head, but are otherwise quite plain.) But savvy marketing and the Japanese style of consumerism have worked in their favor. "Japanese culture is very ritualistic," said Alex Wagner, the managing editor of the music and style magazine The Fader and former managing editor of Tokion, a Tokyo-based fashion and art magazine. "They get hung up one thing and then it becomes this feverish race to get as many of those things as possible."
In Japan devoted Bape fans sometimes line up for hours to shop at Nigo's stores, which are unmarked and are intentionally made difficult to find, to buy clothes that he produces in carefully limited quantities. The feeling of exclusivity is heightened by Nigo's decree that Bape customers may purchase only one piece of any product, and that it must be in their size. "It's to help prevent people from selling the clothes on the black market," Nigo said in an interview through a translator early last week. But it is also a way to protect Bape from becoming a fast-burning fad. "I really don't want a lot of people wearing my clothes," he said.
He has relaxed the purchasing restrictions at his SoHo store, a two-story, million-dollar ode to minimalism that sells an edited assortment of sweatshirts, tees, floor pillows, accessories and limited edition toys. Judging from their prominent placement, it seems that Nigo is banking on the hope that his $180 Bape Sta sneakers, whose colors seem inspired by children's cereals, will be the big draw. The Bathing Ape line has long been popular with the international hipster set. And the colorful sneakers (which bear more than a passing resemblance to Nike Air Force Ones) began enjoying a bit of mainstream recognition last year, when rappers like Jay-Z, Cassidy and Pharrell started wearing them around town and in music videos.
"Everyone is feeling those shoes, white skater kids, the hip hop guys," said Clarence Nathan, the owner of Premium Goods, a specialty sneaker boutique in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, that has carried Bape Stas for nearly two years. "They have a universal appeal and they're selling like crazy." The cost of the shoe at the New York branch of Bathing Ape is significantly lower than the $275 to $300 that Premium Goods and other stores in the city have been charging (though higher than the prices charged for imitations on many Web sites). Mr. Nathan predicts that shoe sales at the SoHo Bathing Ape will be brisk, so brisk that he plans to stop carrying the line himself. The mystique that Nigo has cultivated around his brand has only been deepened by his reclusive nature. It is only after much prodding that he offers up his birth name, Tomoaki Nagao, and still one can't quite be sure if he is being entirely truthful.
But if he is miserly with his conversation, he is not with his money. Nigo's sprawling $30 million home in the fashionable Shibuya district in Tokyo doubles as a warehouse for his obsessions, of which there are many. Over the years Nigo, who is well versed in the art of conspicuous consumption, has collected everything from Star Wars action figures and Planet of the Apes memorabilia to Louis Vuitton luggage, Cristal champagne and American laundry detergent. ("I like the packaging," he said.) One room in his home holds all the Eames furniture he has amassed; another, the "Warhol Room" displays his 20 Campbell's soup silk screens.
"His home is the crème de la crème," said Pharrell, who this past summer started the sneaker line Ice Cream, a joint venture with Nigo for Reebok. "I've never seen anything like it. It's like a museum."
Nigo is similarly fond of jewelry and is partial to the designs of Jacob Arabo, also known as Jacob the Jeweler, hip hop's Harry Winston. "They're like artifacts to me," said Nigo, fingering one of the two diamond-encrusted crosses that hung from his narrow neck.
"He is one of my favorite customers," said Mr. Arabo, who over the years has, in addition to jewelry, created customized belt buckles, key chains and automobile hood ornaments for Nigo. "He is constantly challenging me to make newer, interesting things."
Mr. Arabo did not, however, fashion the diamond and platinum veneers that currently cover Nigo's teeth. For that the designer went to a Tokyo dentist. Nigo said his parents, a billboard maker and nurse from a small town, had no problem with his dental accessories. "If I had gotten a tattoo, that would have really upset them. In Japan a tattoo is associated with yakuza, the mob."
Growing up in Gunma, a province two hours north of Tokyo, Nigo fell in love with fashion in junior high school. While his fashion-forward friends were slaves to Vivienne Westwood's punk aesthetic, Nigo, a former D.J. and drummer, was decidedly hip-hop, favoring the baggy jeans, Adidas shell-top sneakers and ostentatious jewelry that by the mid 80's had become synonymous with the American underground movement. "The thing I love about hip-hop is that it is constantly evolving," Nigo said, "it's so free."
After graduating from Bunka Fukuso Gakuin, one of Japan's top fashion schools, he worked as stylist and fashion editor at magazines. He opened his first shop 11 years ago in Harajuku, Tokyo's equivalent of the Lower East Side. "When we first got there it was the quietest area of Tokyo," Nigo said, "and now it's one of the coolest areas in Tokyo."
Standing before a rack of leather bomber jackets, Nigo said he has absolutely no plans to move to the United States. "I have to be in Japan in order to continue to create Bape," he said. "In Japan, I get influences from America and Europe — the best of both worlds. That's Tokyo style."
Address is 91 Greene Street (next to La Perla and a couple blocks from Broadway)
Here is an article from NYTimes from Dec 19th 2004: (you need to sign up to view the link and it costs money after a week so here is the whole thing (long)
www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/fashion/19NIGO.html
SoHo Runs for Blue and Yellow Sneakers
By LOLA OGUNNAIKE
IT was not the chic designer dresses in the entrance of the Kirna Zabête boutique or the lingerie-clad mannequins of La Perla that stopped foot traffic on Greene Street in SoHo last Monday afternoon, but something a bit more, ahem, pedestrian: sneakers. Twelve pairs — in vivid, whimsical color combinations like robin's-egg blue and yellow and Baskin-Robbins pink and brown — were circling around in a storefront window on what looked like a miniature baggage carousel, and a small crowd of hipsters and tourists had gathered to watch.
"Those right there are the hottest ones," said one wide-eyed young man, pointing at a pair in lime green and black. He and his fellow gawkers were standing in front of the first American outpost of A Bathing Ape, the urban street wear chain that has been wildly popular in Japan for over a decade, the day after the store's opening. It was a scene that Nigo (pronounced NEE-go), the soft-spoken, 33-year-old designer behind the Bathing Ape line and Japan's reigning king of cool, had seen many times before. "They're like eye candy," he said of his creations.
The SoHo Bathing Ape is the 16th store in Nigo's ever-expanding empire, which began in 1993 as a hole-in-the-wall T-shirt shop in the Harajuku district in Tokyo and now includes clothing outlets across Tokyo and in Kyoto, Osaka and London.
Five years after Nigo started selling T-shirts, he began to expand his range, first opening a sneaker emporium called Footsoldiers, and then a burger joint called Bape cafe (Bape being the abbreviated form of Bathing Ape), the hair salon Bape Cuts and an art gallery. Four more Bape stores are scheduled to open in Japan in 2005, and there is serious talk of a Bape hotel. Time Asia recently honored Nigo with an Asia's Heroes award for being an "internationally famous arbiter of style." But judging from the customers that Bathing Ape continues to attract in Japan, none of this growth or attention — not even collaborations with Pepsi and MAC cosmetics — has put a dent in the brand's street credibility.
The T-shirts, hoodies and ball caps that first brought Nigo success, and that continue to be the staples of his line, are not particularly distinctive. (Many feature camouflage prints or the brand's signature ape head, but are otherwise quite plain.) But savvy marketing and the Japanese style of consumerism have worked in their favor. "Japanese culture is very ritualistic," said Alex Wagner, the managing editor of the music and style magazine The Fader and former managing editor of Tokion, a Tokyo-based fashion and art magazine. "They get hung up one thing and then it becomes this feverish race to get as many of those things as possible."
In Japan devoted Bape fans sometimes line up for hours to shop at Nigo's stores, which are unmarked and are intentionally made difficult to find, to buy clothes that he produces in carefully limited quantities. The feeling of exclusivity is heightened by Nigo's decree that Bape customers may purchase only one piece of any product, and that it must be in their size. "It's to help prevent people from selling the clothes on the black market," Nigo said in an interview through a translator early last week. But it is also a way to protect Bape from becoming a fast-burning fad. "I really don't want a lot of people wearing my clothes," he said.
He has relaxed the purchasing restrictions at his SoHo store, a two-story, million-dollar ode to minimalism that sells an edited assortment of sweatshirts, tees, floor pillows, accessories and limited edition toys. Judging from their prominent placement, it seems that Nigo is banking on the hope that his $180 Bape Sta sneakers, whose colors seem inspired by children's cereals, will be the big draw. The Bathing Ape line has long been popular with the international hipster set. And the colorful sneakers (which bear more than a passing resemblance to Nike Air Force Ones) began enjoying a bit of mainstream recognition last year, when rappers like Jay-Z, Cassidy and Pharrell started wearing them around town and in music videos.
"Everyone is feeling those shoes, white skater kids, the hip hop guys," said Clarence Nathan, the owner of Premium Goods, a specialty sneaker boutique in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, that has carried Bape Stas for nearly two years. "They have a universal appeal and they're selling like crazy." The cost of the shoe at the New York branch of Bathing Ape is significantly lower than the $275 to $300 that Premium Goods and other stores in the city have been charging (though higher than the prices charged for imitations on many Web sites). Mr. Nathan predicts that shoe sales at the SoHo Bathing Ape will be brisk, so brisk that he plans to stop carrying the line himself. The mystique that Nigo has cultivated around his brand has only been deepened by his reclusive nature. It is only after much prodding that he offers up his birth name, Tomoaki Nagao, and still one can't quite be sure if he is being entirely truthful.
But if he is miserly with his conversation, he is not with his money. Nigo's sprawling $30 million home in the fashionable Shibuya district in Tokyo doubles as a warehouse for his obsessions, of which there are many. Over the years Nigo, who is well versed in the art of conspicuous consumption, has collected everything from Star Wars action figures and Planet of the Apes memorabilia to Louis Vuitton luggage, Cristal champagne and American laundry detergent. ("I like the packaging," he said.) One room in his home holds all the Eames furniture he has amassed; another, the "Warhol Room" displays his 20 Campbell's soup silk screens.
"His home is the crème de la crème," said Pharrell, who this past summer started the sneaker line Ice Cream, a joint venture with Nigo for Reebok. "I've never seen anything like it. It's like a museum."
Nigo is similarly fond of jewelry and is partial to the designs of Jacob Arabo, also known as Jacob the Jeweler, hip hop's Harry Winston. "They're like artifacts to me," said Nigo, fingering one of the two diamond-encrusted crosses that hung from his narrow neck.
"He is one of my favorite customers," said Mr. Arabo, who over the years has, in addition to jewelry, created customized belt buckles, key chains and automobile hood ornaments for Nigo. "He is constantly challenging me to make newer, interesting things."
Mr. Arabo did not, however, fashion the diamond and platinum veneers that currently cover Nigo's teeth. For that the designer went to a Tokyo dentist. Nigo said his parents, a billboard maker and nurse from a small town, had no problem with his dental accessories. "If I had gotten a tattoo, that would have really upset them. In Japan a tattoo is associated with yakuza, the mob."
Growing up in Gunma, a province two hours north of Tokyo, Nigo fell in love with fashion in junior high school. While his fashion-forward friends were slaves to Vivienne Westwood's punk aesthetic, Nigo, a former D.J. and drummer, was decidedly hip-hop, favoring the baggy jeans, Adidas shell-top sneakers and ostentatious jewelry that by the mid 80's had become synonymous with the American underground movement. "The thing I love about hip-hop is that it is constantly evolving," Nigo said, "it's so free."
After graduating from Bunka Fukuso Gakuin, one of Japan's top fashion schools, he worked as stylist and fashion editor at magazines. He opened his first shop 11 years ago in Harajuku, Tokyo's equivalent of the Lower East Side. "When we first got there it was the quietest area of Tokyo," Nigo said, "and now it's one of the coolest areas in Tokyo."
Standing before a rack of leather bomber jackets, Nigo said he has absolutely no plans to move to the United States. "I have to be in Japan in order to continue to create Bape," he said. "In Japan, I get influences from America and Europe — the best of both worlds. That's Tokyo style."
