BAPE’s full name was chosen to mock the people who buy it.
The name is short for A Bathing Ape in Lukewarm Water, after a comic in which an old man sits in the bath “like an ape in a bath of lukewarm water” until it goes cold. Nigo’s friend Sk8thing picked it in 1993 as a dig at Japan’s idle, well-off young.
BAPE on Brandseum