Nigo and Bathing Ape

[Note: BAPE in New York City is located at 91 Greene St. in SoHo. The telephone number is 212-925-0222]

Wired magazine is where I became familiar with the term "street cred," and no one's got more of it than Nigo (above), creator of Bathing Ape urban street ware.

He started his business in 1993 when he was 22, with a hole-in-the-wall T-shirt shop in the Harajuku district of Tokyo, that city's equivalent of the Lower East Side of New York.

In a story by Lola Ogunnaike in last Sunday's New York Times, he said, "when we first got there it was the quietest area of Tokyo, and now it's one of the coolest areas in Tokyo."

It's amazing what street cred can do for a street.

Bathing Ape's just opened a store in Manhattan's SoHo, the 16th outpost in its burgeoning empire which includes stores in Kyoto, Osaka, and London.

The stores are unmarked and intentionally made difficult to find, and sell clothes produced in carefully limited quantities to make them more scarce and, subsequently, more desirable.

Nigo also decrees that customers may buy only one piece of any product, and it must be in their size.

He said, "It's to help prevent people from selling the clothes on the black market. I really don't want a lot of people wearing my clothes."

I feel the same way.

That's why I never let anyone borrow my clothes. But I digress.

His Bape (shorthand for Bathing Ape) shoes sell for around $300 a pair in Manhattan, though they're going to be priced at $180 in his new store.

Rappers Jay-Z, Cassidy and Pharrell have been wearing them around town and in their videos, making them all the more desirable to those whose desires run in this direction.

Here's a link to the Times story.

I was musing about Nigo and fashion and street cred and what's hot and what's not and bookofjoe just now.

I'm never quite sure what to do about people and things like Nigo and Bathing Ape.

I mean, when something makes it into the New York Times, in a sense it's already over.

It's a little like the cover articles for Time, Fortune, and their ilk: when they herald the next big thing, the only thing you can be absolutely certain about is that the smart money has already been there and left.

The news that something is news is, actually, old news to those who made the best use of it.

Aristotle Onassis once said, "The secret of success in business is knowing something no one else knows."

True enough; of course, this is precisely what insider trading is all about.

Once everyone knows the secret, it's no longer a secret nor is it of much value.

So in a sense, I'm reluctant to even bother with things that are in the major media.

Better to stick with Zembla and Giant Robot and their ilk.

That's the idea, anyhow.