{"id":975285,"date":"2026-05-21T10:17:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/975285\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T10:17:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:17:23","slug":"kenzo-designer-nigos-retrospective-at-londons-design-museum-charts-his-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/975285\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenzo Designer Nigo’s Retrospective at London’s Design Museum Charts His Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLONDON \u2014 <\/strong>Nigo<\/a> has been fashion\u2019s quiet tectonic force for more than three decades, and his creative ideas have traveled from the backstreets of Harajuku to Paris runways.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut his retrospective at London\u2019s Design Museum, \u201cNigo<\/a>: From Japan With Love,\u201d framed his life story less as a triumph of hype than as a spiritual journey. He once defined looking outward to America, hip\u2011hop and global luxury and is now increasingly preoccupied with looking inward to Japanese craft, ceremony and his own sense of \u201cold age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnraveling across four chapters in the basement of the museum by Holland Park, the exhibition<\/a>, running till Oct. 4, features more than 700 objects, with the majority of them sourced from his own personal archive.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI received the offer, and it happened to come at a time when I was thinking about bringing together the story of my 55 years, so I was grateful for the opportunity to do it,\u201d said the current creative director of Kenzo<\/a>, adding that the cultures of London and Tokyo are quite similar in some ways, making London an ideal pick for the retrospective. <\/p>\n

\n\tEsme Hawes, co\u2011curator of the exhibition<\/a>, described it as both a cultural history and a self\u2011portrait of Nigo.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA full\u2011scale recreation of Nigo\u2019s 1980s teenage bedroom at the \u201cNigo: From Japan With Love\u201d exhibition.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Kenzo<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tInstead of opening with Bape\u2019s signature camo motif or major collaborations with the likes of Louis Vuitton and Nike, the exhibition began somewhere quieter: a full\u2011scale recreation of the designer\u2019s 1980s teenage bedroom in Maebashi, just outside Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNigo was very keen that we start from the very beginning,\u201d Hawes explained during a walk-through with WWD.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInitially, we came up with a concept which charts his entire career from fashion college to [his fashion store] Nowhere and then A Bathing Ape. But Nigo was like, \u2018No, we\u2019re starting from the very beginning,’\u201d Hawes added.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrowing up during Japan\u2019s post-war economic boom, the designer was steeped in the lingering presence of American military culture and the flood of U.S. pop references that followed. For Hawes, that cross\u2011pollination, and how teenagers at that time processed it, is fundamental to understanding his work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLots of young people were looking toward American pop culture and fashion as a sort of rebellion to these very traditional Japanese values. Nigo really lapped that up and really absorbed that,\u201d she reinforced.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe first section, \u201cThe Future Is in the Past,\u201d at the \u201cNigo: From Japan With Love\u201d exhibition.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Kenzo<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first section, \u201cThe Future Is in the Past,\u201d put these early influences on full display within USM bespoke canebits with key items including 1950s Levi\u2019s denim jackets, vintage baseball caps and varsity jackets; figurines from\u00a0Donald Duck\u00a0to\u00a0Star Wars; Japanese toys, music and magazines, and even a Japanese tabletop game reimagining American baseball.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNigo as a collector is something that we really wanted to get across in the exhibition. The way he has done that throughout his career, and really used his collection as a toolbox from which he takes ideas and inspirations. You can see that across, even now with his work with Kenzo,\u201d Hawes said.<\/p>\n

\n\tNigo, born Tomoaki Nagao, called those pieces his real education in fashion. \u201cWith vintage pieces, what\u2019s inside can be more important than what you see on the surface. For me, everything I have held over the years has been a kind of teacher,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe second chapter, \u201cEvolution,\u201d at the \u201cNigo: From Japan With Love\u201d exhibition.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Kenzo<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second chapter, \u201cEvolution,\u201d\u00a0showed what he did with those references. In 1993, Nigo cofounded the Harajuku shop\u00a0Nowhere with fellow designer Jun Takahashi and, in the same year, launched\u00a0A Bathing Ape, a cult streetwear brand now owned by the Hong Kong-based fashion retailer I.T.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith limited means, he built a model that would become an industry standard across both streetwear and luxury.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe really early Bathing Ape pieces were quite a DIY project to begin with, but he was only producing five of each jacket or T\u2011shirt. Partly that was because he had limited resources, being a young person setting up a business in the \u201990s. But also, Nigo didn\u2019t want everyone to be wearing the same thing, which I think is a really interesting concept,\u201d Hawes said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThrough that scarcity, he created this kind of hype around the products, but also this sense of luxury as well. In the \u201990s, that wasn\u2019t so prevalent within the fashion and streetwear industries, but Nigo really brings that to the forefront,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibition also tracked Nigo\u2019s shift through early Bape sweatshirts and jackets, along with innovative marketing ideas that became his signature, such as T\u2011shirts packaged like spray cans, membership cards styled as credit cards and a slew of collaborations with\u00a0Kaws, MAC, Pepsi, Disney and Nintendo.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Nigo:<\/p>\n

\n\tThe third installment of the show, \u201cThe Nigo Effect,\u201d highlighted major collaborations such as sunglasses created with Pharrell Williams and Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton\u2019s spring 2005 show, a men\u2019s look from Williams\u2019 fall 2025 for Vuitton, his ongoing partnership with\u00a0Nike, as well as key looks he has designed for Kenzo.<\/p>\n

\n\tNigo said he has been \u201cfortunate enough\u201d to work with brands that once defined his teenage fascinations, and emphasized that his success was a collective effort with peers like Williams, Takahashi and Kaws. \u201cThere has never been jealousy or resentment. Street culture was created collectively by our generation. If even one person had been missing, it might not be what it is today,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, Human Made, the label he launched with Williams in 2010, made history with its initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, becoming the first streetwear brand to go public. <\/p>\n

\n\tYet for all the color and noise of Nigo\u2019s achievement, the exhibition\u2019s final act, \u201cNew Traditions,\u201d was notably subdued.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis part\u00a0focused on his deepening engagement with Japanese ceramics\u00a0and the\u00a0tea ceremony as seen in a life\u2011size glass tea house, and 25 handcrafted ceramic works from his Tokyo studio inside, placed on traditional Tatami mats.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Nigo<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNigo with his handcrafted ceramic works.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Kenzo<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNigo was really keen that we showcase his relatively newer found passion for ceramics,\u201d Hawes said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s training to be a master of tea ceremony, which can take years and years. It requires a lot of dedicated practice. Nigo was very keen that we end the show in that way, because this is something that he\u2019s spending more and more of his time doing,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the rear wall of the tea house hung a work of calligraphy by\u00a0Yuichi Inoue\u00a0that translates simply as\u00a0\u201cold age.\u201d\u00a0It was Nigo\u2019s choice to close the show on that word.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRespecting the past is important,\u201d the designer said. \u201cThe history of American vintage is about 130 years, but the Japanese tea ceremony and ceramics have around 450 years of history. It would be impossible to fully understand them in one lifetime, but I believe they will continue to influence me in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Nigo has been fashion\u2019s quiet tectonic force for more than three decades, and his creative ideas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":975286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,6968,4884,212400,257,265264,16,15,56642,271739],"class_list":["post-975285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-exhibition","tag-great-britain","tag-kenzo","tag-london","tag-nigo","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wwd-weekend","tag-wwd-weekend-culture"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116612055293555717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/975286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}