Bape x Star Wars: someone hand me a phaser

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away there was this clothing brand from Japan that became really pretty cool mainly because of the select media types it chose to be associated with and the quirky cartoon-like nature of its designs which also had a kind of respectable undertone because they centred on apes and played quite a bit on the planet on which apes lived, called the Planet of the Apes.

Well that was then and that was that star system. Somewhere along the line tastes in this brand changed, initially in Japan, where people soon got a sniff of what a sell-out the founder of Bathing Ape, Nigo, was becoming. Then some real gorillas, or gangsta rappers as they are also known, started to take interest in the brand and before long Bape, as it was known then, had transgressed from cool to crap.

A similar thing happened to this brand called Star Wars, the reputation of which was decimated by a succession of appalling prequels, leaving only the design of costumes and the original films to stand it up. But then the creator George Lucas got greedy and as he slowly licensed away the last traces of respectability, along came Bape.

And this is the result. The bastard offsrping of a dying brand and an overmilked movie franchise.

And as a former fan of both of these entities, I am slowly weeping into my keyboard as I type.

Bape x Star Wars launched in the New York Bape store last week.

I am in the process of finding a shuttle off this rock.