A Timeline of Nigo's Career: How He Got To Kenzo

Image via Complex Original

Nigo released the Bapesta sneaker, which was a riff on Nike’s classic Air Force 1, in 2002. He updated the silhouette with a star and lightning zap, which replaced the Nike swoosh, and APE and BAPE on the sole, which replaced the AIR text. When Nigo released the sneaker, Air Force 1s were a staple, but they weren’t exactly a canvas for creativity. Dapper Dan was known for customizing them with designer logo fabric in the 1980s, but outside of that, the sneakers, which were nicknamed the Uptowns because they were a Harlem staple, were relatively basic unless they were customized. Nigo changed that with the Bapesta, releasing the sneaker in new fabrications like patent leather, and interesting color combinations. Nigo also turned them into collectors’ items by collaborating with artists including Kanye West in 2007, a couple of years before he would partner with Nike, and KAWS in 2005, a few years before he would work with Supreme and Nike on an AF1 design. Nigo also released a collab with SpongeBob, N.E.R.D., DC Comics, and others. Nigo helped elevate the sneaker into a collectible luxury item. —Aria Hughes

When Bape arrived in SoHo, Nigo had already established an innovative retail footprint across Japan and Hong Kong with help from Masamichi Katayama, the founder of architecture firm Wonderwall. Bape stores merchandised products as if they were art pieces in a museum and featured colorful Bapesta sneakers encased in glass on a rotating conveyor belt. “Working with Nigo opened my eyes to how conventions and preconceptions limit our ideas,” Katayama told Complex. “Creating Bape stores was not just about planning or design. It was about Nigo’s sensibility for the quality of the execution. Our work together was original and didn’t follow market trends or stereotypical retail formats. He taught me to choose what you think is right and to create your own rules.” 

Having a store in Soho showed the competitive New York retail market that streetwear stores could still offer a high end experience, and for the first time consumers in America could buy Bape pieces straight from the retailer.—Aria Hughes

With Bape infiltrating the United States market, thanks in large part to the help of Pharrell, he and Nigo officially teamed up to launch a Billionaire Boys Club/Icecream in 2003. The streetwear label immediately made an impression, not only because of the two influential men behind it and clever product placement in the “Frontin’” video, but because of its attention-grabbing graphics. It quickly gained an audience with the help of its astronaut head logo, T-shirts with its now-iconic arc logo across the chest, colorful zip hoodies covered in diamonds and dollar signs, and slogan, “wealth is of the heart and mind, not the pocket.” The pieces were expensive in comparison to its streetwear counterparts at the time due to the line being 100 percent manufactured in Japan. Despite the steeper prices, the line was incredibly successful and became a symbol of the era. In a way, it showed that streetwear items like colorful graphic T-shirts and all-over print hoodies could be viewed as a luxury commodity, an ideal that we see infiltrating the runways of luxury fashion houses time and time again today but wasn’t as accepted at the time. While BBC may not have the same cache it once did in the aughts, the brand is still going strong today. And it wouldn’t have been possible without Nigo. —Mike DeStefano

Years before Nigo was being tapped by Virgil Abloh for collaborative capsules or appointed by Kenzo, his relationship with LVMH was already blooming. Back in 2004, he and Pharrell were tapped by then-creative director of Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, to design a line of sunglasses. The most sought after pair is known as the Millionaire. The $1,200 Carrera-inspired frames came in an array of colors such as red, purple, and black, highlighted by gold hardware. With the help of the Nigo and Pharrell co-signs, the design became coveted among more than just the luxury consumer. It was so popular that more colorways would be released in 2007. A testament to how influential it was, Virgil Abloh also created his own take on the Millionaire shades, the 1.1 Millionaire, for his debut collection with LV in 2019. Nowadays, luxury items being adopted by the streetwear consumer is commonplace. But the Millionaires are yet another example of Nigo using his touch to introduce the luxury world to a bigger audience long before it was expected.  —Mike DeStefano

After successfully launching and running Bape, Nigo’s style was changing and he wanted to make clothes for himself, which is why he introduced Human Made. The brand’s name was inspired by the evolution of an ape to a human and offered more grown up designs that veered away from Bape’s popular logos and bright colors. Instead, Nigo dived into workwear and craftsmanship through Human Made by attempting to recreate special details that no longer existed in modern day garments. In 2012 he told Dazed: “The era of clothes that inspires me for Human Made represents lost technology: the machines don’t exist anymore to make some of the fabrics and stitching we admire in old clothes – so working around that problem to achieve a similar feel is an interesting process.” Since launching Human Made the brand has also expanded into producing hoodies and graphic T-shirts. It has collaborated with artists like Lil Uzi Vert and American fast food chains like KFC. The line shows Nigo’s ability to build brands that consumers connect with.—Aria Hughes

By 2010, Bape lost some of its luster as it became less and less exclusive. It was also no longer profitable and therefore in extreme debt. Because of that, Nigo gave up a 90 percent stake in the company to I.T Ltd., a Hong Kong-based retailer that paid around $2.8 million to acquire the brand. Nigo stayed on for a couple of years but eventually exited Bape to focus on Human Made and other projects.—Aria Hughes

One of the biggest moves that Nigo made post-Bape was heading the creative direction for Uniqlo’s UT T-shirt line. Nigo became Uniqlo UT’s first-ever creative director and brought some drastic changes to the brand’s popular graphic T-shirts. “Uniqlo has been using the same shape and cut for a long time. All of them had side seams, and I wanted them to be tubular-knit,” Nigo told Highsnobiety in an interview. “The quality was all good, but it looked good flat and [boxy] when you wore them. I wanted it to be [comfortable] and breathy when you wear them. From that point, [it was just] using the actual graphics and I’m used to working with graphics” The first Uniqlo UT T-shirts that Nigo dropped introduced a new T-shirt model dubbed “The New Model T” and included a range of collaborations with Star Wars, Line Friends, Peanuts, and more. “It was about the global reach of the company,” Nigo said in another interview. “UT is streetwear, effectively. It’s what people really wear on the street. It’s interesting for me to be able to influence that.”

Although Nigo brought in friends like Jun Takahashi and Pharrell to design UT collaborations for Uniqlo, the biggest collaboration that Nigo brought to UT was with Kaws. It was a huge moment for streetwear enthusiasts because Kaws shirts were previously only available in limited quantities through his defunct clothing label OriginalFake or limited-edition collaborations with streetwear brands such as Supreme. Kaws has since collaborated with Uniqlo three times and his releases have always been met with so much hype that it has even led shoppers in China to nearly trample each other to get T-shirts. But what Nigo’s work at Uniqlo proved was that his creative eye could resonate with a much wider audience that went beyond the cult streetwear fanbase that he’s built throughout the years and bring new excitement to a sleepy brand.—Lei Takanashi

A watershed moment from Virgil Abloh’s time at Louis Vuitton was his collaborative work with Nigo. Announced in December 2019, the LV2 collection saw Nigo lend his creative lens to the fashion house. In doing so, it further pushed the traditional streetwear ethos into the luxury world by nodding to the 2000s era of streetwear. Abloh told i-D when speaking about the collaboration, “Being at Louis Vuitton, it was important to me to bring that full circle, to see through a Nigo project at one of the highest levels of Parisian fashion, and make that possible with my interpretation, as well.”

Across the two collections that would release, designed in tandem by Abloh and Nigo, the Japanese designer made his presence felt through the use of motifs like ducks, hearts, and tigers that are commonly featured across his Human Made offerings, while nodding to UK’s Savile Row and mod era in the process. Other twists included new takes on LV’s iconic Damier and monogram prints through the use of dripping paneling featured across denim pieces and leather goods that one couldn’t help but tie to Nigo’s previous work with BBC ICECREAM. The whimsical approach made the capsules feel uniquely Nigo, while still maintaining more traditional offerings to balance it out–perfectly tailored chinos, knit cardigans, and minimally-branded kimono coats among them. It proved that when given the keys, Nigo’s playful approach could translate to desirable items in the luxury realm without fully abandoning the brand’s DNA. If nothing else, it should make you hopeful that he can reinvigorate Kenzo in his new position. 

While speaking on the project, Abloh stated, “For me, there is no one like NIGO. He helped us understand how luxury can relate to a new generation.” —Mike DeStefano