TO FULFILL A ROLE.”

But then again, Nigo has always been a music geek and culture maven. Born in 1970, he grew up in the medium-sized city of Maebashi, capital of the Gunma Prefecture, but used to sneak away to Tokyo to check out the Vivienne Westwood store and buy records from his favorite shop, Cisco. First, he became obsessed with the 1950s rockabilly style of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly before turning his eyes and ears to hip-hop, dressing increasingly like his idols LL Cool J and Beastie Boys. “My first encounter with hip-hop was Raising Hell by Run-DMC. I was 16 years old. It wasn’t only the music, but the look— I’d never seen anything like it: Adidas Superstars worn without laces. It was shocking,” he tells me. “Up until that point I was dressing in a style that we refer to as ‘American casual’ in Japan: Levis 501s, white Hanes tees, glasses with black frames. After I saw Run-DMC, my whole approach to style changed.”

He moved himself to the big city to attend Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, wrote for a fashion magazine, did some styling, and fell in with Hiroshi Fujiwara, a Japanese design legend that some have called the godfather of streetwear because of his then-progressive approach to fashion. Nigo actually gained his nickname—which translates to “number 2”—as a reference to his place in the pecking order to the older, wiser Fujiwara, though he admits their bond wasn’t exactly a strict teacher-student relationship as much as it was just a chance to witness how things worked and take that knowledge into the world. “Master Hiroshi didn’t really teach me anything—I learned by watching him during the time we spent together,” he says. “Not teaching is a path to the most valuable learning.”

Eventually, Nigo opened Nowhere in the then-burgeoning neighborhood of Harajuku, spurring him to make his own clothes to fill the store’s racks. A Bathing Ape was soon born, a name that came to Nigo after watching the original Planet of the Apes. Nigo would produce T-shirts—homespun tees featuring the BAPE ape—in runs of 30 or so, handing out around half of them to friends, and the brand eventually caught fire in the trendier corners of Tokyo before making its way to America. “It’s like a generational shift. When I started out, there was really no respect for that stuff and even to the level where it actually had dress codes: like, you can’t come in here wearing jeans and a T-shirt. That kind of thing has really vanished from the world,” he told me in an interview back in 2013. “So, I guess for a younger generation of people that have grown up in a world where that wasn’t the case, it’s not a big deal for them, it’s not even a factor.”

Now, there’s something of that fundamental spirit of imagination in his work all over again. In the decade since we last spoke, Nigo has tried his hand at partnering with Uniqlo, where he served as creative director for its UT line, making graphic tees to appeal to the Japanese company’s gigantic global audience, to making more sophisticated work at Kenzo and Human Made, which feels special, small, strange, and, most importantly to any modern designer, cool. He has turned his interests to more peaceful endeavors. “Recently, I’m deeply into Japanese Chanoyu [tea-ceremony] culture,” he says. “Maybe that’ll be reflected in what I make in future.” When asked how he stays in touch with what’s happening in youth culture, he says it’s a mere matter of keeping your eyes open, paying attention, and putting the more chaotic modern distractions—the kind he may have loved as an avant-garde upstart—aside. “I see the city through my car window while I’m traveling,” he says resolutely, “not through my iPhone.”

As for the culture of hype that he helped hone—the one that has sent sneaker prices skyrocketing, made certain coveted products nearly impossible to buy except at insanely high prices, and created a frenzy for fresh product so massive it’s almost become madness—he is even keeled and practical about it all. “You could make an analogy with any other kind of environment,” he says. “There are good and bad aspects depending on where you are situated within it.”

And of course, he is humble about his influence on the world of streetwear, instead focused on what he’s creating now, and just happy to still be in the game—a game he helped establish the rules for—after all these years. “I don’t think of myself as being influential,” he says, “but I’m grateful that I am able to continue to fulfill a role.” So are we.