by This is what happens to a brand when they get too big, too rediculous, and are defined by an era. Bape might as well be the new Cross Colors if you ask me. Now I know they just opened a flagship store in LA, and Nigo has a Bape Veyron and a Bape Gullwing
-but the party will be over if he doesn’t start making interesting products. Especially, if I can buy knock offs of the line for $10 at the local swap meet.
Now I was going to save this post for the Marketeers blog, but I figure that would be preaching to the choir. Plus with 1500 readers a day on this blog we might actually get a discussion going. Anyways, Bape embodies the rollercoaster ride that took us to the recession. Streetwear in the 2000s will be written about in the future as an era much like the coke ridden 80s. It was all about who can make an item appear to be more luxurious without any real luxury. Did your painted gold hoody cords make you feel like a baller? Probably. Did it feel good telling your friends you paid $400 for your kicks? Probably. Do you now look at your closet full of all-over prints and fruit rollup themed kicks and wonder what the fuck you were thinking? Definitely. I remember when I was making a design for a Proletariat all over print and I stopped myself because I knew out of all the stuff I had made that this was for sure going to be a splash in the pan fad. So I repurposed the design and made it into our last skate deck. Crisis averted. What about all the gold foil prints? It actually makes you think about how rediculous most luxury items really are. People really need to feel like they are worth something so we adorn our bodies with a bunch of minerals that someone has told us are more rare than other minerals. (sorry Painite, you’ll get your day) I have always been a person who prefers to make value based purchases. For instance if I were going to buy a nice wallet, I would buy a wallet made of fine leather, preferably hand-crafted or vintage, something with a story and materials that have a solid feel to them. But most of the world would rather buy a fabric wallet with LV printed all over it so other people would know just by seeing the wallet that it was expensive. Which of these wallets do you think was harder ro make? Which one will be harder to knockoff? Which wallet has real value and which one has a value based on people’s current state of mind?
Anyways, I don’t really know where I am going with this, it’s just all these thoughts raced through my head when I saw a pair of $10 jeans surrounded by flip flops and Chinese made detergents, that 2 years ago a kid in the hood probably got merked for.
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