From 1st May 2026, the Design Museum will stage the first-ever retrospective of NIGO, the designer widely credited with collapsing the distance between streetwear and luxury. A foundational figure in what later became known as hype culture, NIGO’s influence spans fashion, music, design and popular culture — shaping how brands, collaboration and taste operate today.
Best known for founding A Bathing Ape in the 1990s, co-launching Billionaire Boys Club with Pharrell Williams in 2003, and later creating HUMAN MADE, NIGO has spent three decades sampling, remixing and reframing cultural references across continents. In 2021, he became the first Japanese Artistic Director of KENZO since Kenzo Takada, bringing his archive-driven sensibility to one of Paris fashion’s historic houses.
Featuring more than 700 objects — over 600 drawn from NIGO’s personal archive — NIGO: From Japan with Love traces his creative trajectory from the backstreets of Harajuku to the global runway. Highlights include a recreation of his teenage bedroom, early BAPE garments, hand-thrown ceramics made by NIGO himself, and a full-scale glass tea house created especially for the exhibition.
“I am truly honoured for my first retrospective exhibition to be held at the Design Museum in London,”
says NIGO,
“and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to present my work in such an iconic space.”
The exhibition unfolds across four thematic sections: The Future is in the Past, Evolution, The NIGO Effect, and New Traditions.
The opening section begins in 1980s Tokyo, with a replica of NIGO’s teenage bedroom. Here, childhood ephemera — toys, magazines, music and Americana — reveal the early collision of Japanese youth culture and postwar American influence that would shape his visual language. Vintage Levi’s jackets, baseball caps and varsity silhouettes sit alongside figurines, film posters and games, mapping the cultural cross-pollination that underpins his practice. From his vast archive of more than 10,000 objects, NIGO has selected 300 key items, displayed on USM Modular shelving — the same system used in his Tokyo studio.
Evolution charts the emergence of NIGO’s early career, from the NOWHERE store he co-founded with Jun Takahashi in 1993 to the birth of A Bathing Ape. Rare early BAPE pieces sit alongside design drawings, illustrating how limited runs, inventive packaging and collaborations fuelled a new model of desire. Spray-can T-shirt packaging, credit-card-style membership passes, and collaborations with KAWS, Nintendo, Disney and Pepsi highlight NIGO’s instinctive understanding of branding as cultural storytelling.
Music runs through the exhibition as a parallel thread. From styling hip-hop artists to founding BAPE Sounds and forming Teriyaki Boyz, NIGO’s output moves seamlessly between sound and style. CDs, merchandise and playful objects — from figurines to snow globes — sit beside garments, reinforcing how lifestyle became part of the brand logic.
The NIGO Effect focuses on his post-cult status years, examining collaborations with Louis Vuitton, Nike and long-term creative partners. Sunglasses designed with Marc Jacobs and Pharrell, sealed APE Force trainers, varsity jackets and recent Louis Vuitton menswear looks trace how NIGO’s early obsessions came full circle — transforming childhood influences into global collaborations.
The final section, New Traditions, turns inward. Here, NIGO’s engagement with Japanese craft takes centre stage. Alongside training in the tea ceremony, he has developed a ceramics practice, travelling across Japan to study regional techniques. Twenty-five of his own ceramic works are shown alongside a life-size glass tea house — a contemporary reimagining of ritual and restraint, designed with NOT A HOTEL.
Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, notes:
“NIGO’s contributions to the fashion industry as we know it today are highly significant and under-explored. He has helped redesign the landscape of brand collaboration while continuing to blur boundaries between streetwear and luxury.”
NIGO: From Japan with Love at the Design Museum. Photo courtesy of NIGO
NIGO: From Japan with Love opens 1st May 2026. Booking Now
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication and exclusive retail editions available through the Design Museum Shop. The exhibition is supported by NOT A HOTEL.
