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Like every other Japanese kid, Tomoaki Nagao — known now as Nigo — was obliged to wear a uniform when he was in high school in the 1980s. “The thing about uniforms is while they make everyone look the same, they also give everyone the chance to find subtle ways to express themselves.” Nigo’s peers would customise their academic fits by swapping out the official school buttons for clandestine signifiers of band allegiance. They would adjust their blazers, ties and trousers in order to telegraph discreet sedition. They would bend the rules.
So what radical act did Nigo, founder of A Bathing Ape and the so-called “Godfather of Streetwear”, apply to his uniform? I suggest it must have been wild. “I took the course of being strictly as ordinary as possible,” Nigo replies from behind his ever-present sunglasses. “I dressed straight off the shelf.”
Nigo is speaking in the Rue Vivienne studio from which — in between semi-constant commutes between Tokyo and Paris — he has been working as creative director for the house of Kenzo since September 2021. We are checking out the collection that will be shown Friday night in Paris. Nigo and Kenzo have recruited Off-White’s Ib Kamara to style it for the first time: when we meet for this appointment on Tuesday the casting is in full swing. On the eve of the show, I checked in with Kamara to ask how he’d been finding working alongside a man who is among the most totemic in contemporary culture today. “Inspirational,” he replied.
It is vital to note that every quote from Nigo in this article is translated, by nature an imprecise process (which makes it both so interesting and so central to Nigo’s work). Every question is asked via his long-standing translator Toby Feltwell, who has known Nigo since the 1990s. This important detail brings us back to the broader power of details and their place in what Kenzo has cooked up for Friday night.
Nigo says that the collection’s two main inspirations are the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) and Star Wars. YMO was formative for Nigo, who laughs as he shares that he even once served as synth drummer in a tribute band dedicated to them. YMO, too, were deeply committed to the uniform. As for Star Wars, says Nigo (via Feltwell): “George Lucas was famously influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress. What I took from that is this way of creating a new culture that doesn’t exist on this planet by reference to a foreign culture [on earth]. In order for that to be convincing, it cannot be obvious what you are taking reference from. So from this Star Wars reference and thinking how people use small details to personalise uniforms, I had this realisation that Kenzo can’t just be ‘I’m doing this Japanese thing’; instead it has to be something like that new culture.”
In other words — again, not verbatim — Nigo is planning to step further beyond the eminent shadow of the house founder in order to be less literally referential both to his archive and readily recognisable Japanese tropes more generally. The objective is freshness. He adds: “What doesn’t change is my profound respect for Kenzo. I still refer to his archive and take hints from it. However, I also finally feel with this collection that it has become more my Kenzo.” YMO becomes relevant again here. It was one of the first Japanese musical bands to break through to a global audience without being framed as intrinsically Japanese.
Becoming Nigo
Nigo is himself known for his expression through clothing, cited by musicians and designers from across the global spectrum as a key catalyst in the development of contemporary culture. A Bathing Ape, which he founded in the mid-1990s, was a canonical brand in the first, pre-millennial wave of what is now termed “streetwear” (even if that term itself now sounds old). He has always worked across music, too. He first met Feltwell via a collaboration with London label Mo’ Wax, the product of which was a CD I remember buying in London sometime later in that decade. And then there is Pharrell Williams: the two men met in 2003 and launched their first brand together, Billionaire Boys Club, in 2005.
Nigo was even once a fashion editor of sorts. He wrote a column for the seminal completist menswear magazine, Popeye, with his friend Jun Takahashi, whom he met studying at the famous Bunka fashion college in Tokyo. Around that time he worked as the assistant to designer and musician Hiroshi Fujiwara, where he earned his moniker, Nigo — which translates to “number two”. The two men resembled each other so closely, the name was born.
Meanwhile, Takahashi had by this time begun producing clothes under the label Undercover. Says Nigo: “But he didn’t have anywhere to sell it. Some shops would order pieces but he didn’t have anywhere fixed to show the clothes. Then somebody suggested to me there was a shop available. So we thought we could do half of it as a kind of extension of the column — I could select things to buy to put on sale and show — and in the other half Jun could sell Undercover.”
That shop was called “Nowhere” (Nigo says he still has the sign somewhere in his archives). He sold vintage, sneakers and military pieces in his part of the store, and would later begin to offer the first A Bathing Ape designs, too. In November 1993, after six months of business, he and Takahashi decided to give the shop a refit, and throw a reopening event — 2,000 people turned up, he recalls. “And probably less than 20 people could fit in the shop.”
Redefining subcultures
Back then the subcultural scenes, such as that defined by Nigo and his group in Tokyo, were geographically insulated. They were not easy for those outside of the culture to penetrate, and the internet was in its earliest phase. This allowed them to mushroom and form an identity before breaking into wider culture fully formed. Does Nigo believe that such subcultures can still evolve today? “I myself am definitely not part of the subculture today, that’s the first thing to say. As for whether they can form today, well, maybe they can, but maybe to do it they have to be like a truffle: invisible.”
Nigo is responsible for Human Made, the brand he leads with Williams, as well as Kenzo. Of the two he says: “I really try to think of them separately. But I use the same brain for both, so naturally I can’t help that there is some overlap. Recently I’ve come to see my own position as quite neutral in the brands that I work on. I want the brands to be in front of me and to concentrate on the work of making the clothes. I don’t want it to be about my personality. That’s why I don’t wear the brands myself.”
But how can this be avoided when — via that origin story, and his work at A Bathing Ape, and the sheer cultural heft his nickname carries — he is seen as such a foundational figure in streetwear? He laughs as I run through some grandiose titles, then says: “I really don’t think of myself that way. And the reason I want this neutral approach to the work is that I want to continue focusing on what’s coming next. Seeing Pharrell at Louis Vuitton this week I had a realisation; Pharrell is an artist, while I am an engineer.”
Ah, Pharrell: Williams has publicly said that, before he was asked to take on the Louis Vuitton menswear job, he had suggested to the high-ups there that the best man for the role would be Nigo. I asked Nigo for his take on that. “I think Pharrell is the best choice for Vuitton. There’s a lot that he does that I couldn’t come up with myself. We’ve been working together for more than 20 years now, and it is always very interesting.”
As we talk and walk around the rails some models have arrived in the studio. Kamara looks poised. It’s time to get back to work.
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