
I guess if your brand is still cutting-edge cool 15 years after you've founded it, you must be doing something right. And if you're pulling it off in Japan, home to many a fleeting fashion trend and some of the world's most finicky shoppers, you must really know what you're doing.
Sure, teen and twentysomething Japanese hipsters love Bape's thick-soled, star-slicked sneakers and camouflage sweatshirts -- so much so that they'll patiently wait in line to enter the brand's stores in the Harajuku, Omotesando or Aoyama neighborhoods when traffic peaks.
As Nigo's $70 million label expands abroad -- Bape opened its second U.S. store in Los Angeles in April -- it looks like the label still has plenty of room for expansion here, too, both with the Japanese and with foreign tourists. Case in point: The other day, I witnessed a Chinese-speaking couple posing for photos in front of a Bape store.
In Tokyo's teeming street fashion scene, the next Nigo is surely just around the block. But the original article apparently still has plenty of mileage in him -- at least if street traffic is anything to go by.


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