{"id":555843,"date":"2026-04-28T22:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555843\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:50:09","slug":"a-bathing-ape-was-actually-a-big-mistake-for-nigo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555843\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bathing Ape Was \u2018Actually a Big Mistake\u2019 for Nigo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigo<\/a> is one of the original architects of streetwear\u2014not just part of the story, but someone who helped write its rules in the first place.<\/p>\n

Long before \u201cdrops\u201d and \u201chype\u201d were words that meant anything, he was building a system out of a small corner of Tokyo. Back then, information moved slowly and taste was something you had to piece together yourself. From A Bathing Ape in the \u201990s\u2014a label that would go on to define an entire era\u2014to Human Made, and now his role as artistic director at Kenzo,<\/a> his career has stretched from subculture to global institution without ever settling into one lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the \u201980s, I was a fashion kid in the Japanese countryside, and the only way I could get any information was through magazines,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Luke Hayes<\/p>\n

Now, he’s in London, about to open \u201cNigo: From Japan with Love\u201d at the Design Museum<\/a>\u2014his first retrospective outside of Japan. It’s a big one, too: more than 700 objects spanning three decades, from early pieces and personal artifacts to recent work, including a straight-up reconstruction of the bedroom he had when he was a teenager. \u201cI had everything out in my atelier and I picked from there.\u201d Today, he’s wearing a military cap pulled low, a chore jacket, with a pair of thick-framed sunglasses on his face, complete with blue-tinted lenses. His arms are folded by default.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I look at the exhibition, I feel very different. It actually took me about a year to choose the items to exhibit.\u201d Before almost every answer, he pauses\u2014\u201cSou desu ne,\u201d (\u201clet me see\u201d) he says softly, buying himself a second to line things up. \u201cIt’s my life that’s on display, but it feels like I’m looking at someone else’s life, because you keep refining yourself as a person and the things that you’re interested in. Fundamentally, my style is the same, but my interests have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNigo: From Japan with Love\u201d moves from early Harajuku, to the years building Bape<\/a> into something far bigger than its original circle, and then into Human Made and Kenzo. There’s also a section that’s just about Japanese culture. But right in the middle of it all is something new: his long-awaited collab with Nike<\/a>. The project, dubbed \u201cLO2\u201d (a reference to the cult magazine column he that co-created with Jun Takahashi in the early \u201990s), also marks his first-ever take on the mythical Air Force 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigo is one of the original architects of streetwear\u2014not just part of the story, but someone who helped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[9013,388,90,190911,19345,9012,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-555843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-digital_syndication","tag-london","tag-science","tag-streetwear","tag-style","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}