Nigo is one of the original architects of streetwear—not just part of the story, but someone who helped write its rules in the first place.
Long before “drops” and “hype” 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 ’90s—a label that would go on to define an entire era—to Human Made, and now his role as artistic director at Kenzo, his career has stretched from subculture to global institution without ever settling into one lane.
“Back in the ’80s, I was a fashion kid in the Japanese countryside, and the only way I could get any information was through magazines,” he tells me.
Luke Hayes
Now, he’s in London, about to open “Nigo: From Japan with Love” at the Design Museum—his 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. “I had everything out in my atelier and I picked from there.” 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.
“When I look at the exhibition, I feel very different. It actually took me about a year to choose the items to exhibit.” Before almost every answer, he pauses—“Sou desu ne,” (“let me see”) he says softly, buying himself a second to line things up. “It’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.”
“Nigo: From Japan with Love” moves from early Harajuku, to the years building Bape 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. The project, dubbed “LO2” (a reference to the cult magazine column he that co-created with Jun Takahashi in the early ’90s), also marks his first-ever take on the mythical Air Force 1.