A Bathing Ape was founded in Tokyo in 1993 by Nigo, born Tomoaki Nagao, with the graphic designer Sk8thing. It grew out of Nowhere, the Harajuku shop Nigo opened that year with Jun Takahashi of Undercover. Hong Kong retailer I.T took control in 2011, and Nigo left soon after. That outline is solid. Several of the details people repeat are less so, and we flag them below.
Who is Nigo?
Nigo was born in 1970 and grew up in Maebashi, in Gunma Prefecture. Complex says he moved to Tokyo at 18 to study editorial at Bunka Fashion College, hoping to become a fashion journalist. He worked as a stylist and writer for Popeye magazine and fell in with Hiroshi Fujiwara, an older figure in the Tokyo scene.
The name came from that friendship. Nigo means "number two", and Hypebeast and Complex both tie it to his place beside Fujiwara. Highsnobiety adds that the two looked alike.
Nowhere and the start of BAPE
Nowhere opened on April 1, 1993, according to Hypebeast's coverage of the Design Museum retrospective. A mesh fence split the shop. Takahashi sold Undercover on one side and Nigo sold sportswear he picked himself on the other. Complex places the shop in "Urahara", the hidden back streets of Harajuku.
Nigo then started making clothes to fill his side. Hypebeast says the name came to him after watching the original Planet of the Apes. Highsnobiety and Farfetch add a second meaning, the Japanese idiom "a bathing ape in lukewarm water", a jab at youth who have too much and do too little. The Ape Head logo also comes from the 1968 film, and Hypebeast credits the concept to Sk8thing, real name Shinichiro Nakamura, who shaped the early graphics.
