Nigo has never been one to sugarcoat things, and a recent chat with British GQ proved just that. When asked to reflect on A Bathing Ape — the brand that made him a streetwear legend — he didn’t exactly gush.
“Looking back, Bape was actually a big mistake,” he told the publication. Then came the pivot: “But in a good way.”
It’s the kind of quote that stops you mid-scroll, until you hear the full thought. For Nigo, Bape wasn’t a regret — it was a stepping stone. Without that chapter, he says, there’s no Human Made. No second act. No version of his life that he actually enjoys living.
Still, he later walked back the word “mistake” and replaced it with something more honest: “Maybe more of a battle that I lost. Because I ended up having to sell the company. Otherwise, I could have still been running it.”
That sale happened back in 2011, when Nigo offloaded 90 percent of his stake in Bape to Hong Kong retailer I.T Limited for around $2.8 million — a figure that, in hindsight, feels like a bargain for what the brand represented culturally. He stayed on as creative director for two more years before walking away from the brand he’d built over two decades.
But even before he officially left, Nigo was already thinking about what came next. In a 2013 interview, he mentioned that about six months before his exit, his mind had already shifted to the future. That future turned out to be Human Made, which he’d quietly launched back in 2010 as a more intentional, stripped-back creative outlet — a deliberate contrast to the global machine Bape had become.
The irony? Human Made is now following a similar trajectory. Just last month, the brand announced it’s expanding into the United States with physical retail stores on the way.
Some battles you lose. Some mistakes you make. And sometimes, both end up being exactly what needed to happen.