Source: BAPE / BAPE
Three weeks ago, we reported Kid Cudi and Japanese BAPE collaborating on a limited-edition T-shirt but hinting at the possible development of a new clothing line later this year. Well, the two have linked up again and taken things to the next level with a full-fledged capsule collection, available for purchase Saturday, February 20.
At a count of 20 items, this collaboration will be the largest one that the Japanese fashion house has ever worked on with an artist to date. As described on the website: “In this collection, items based on Kid Cudi’s ideas are available, such as “BABY MILO®” style “Kid Cudi” character design, “BAPE® X KID CUDI Enter Galactic Camo,” and Kid Cudi’s nickname “MOONMAN” logo. The collection features all the motifs.”
Cudi’s relationship with the brand dates back to 2008 when he moved from Cleveland to NYC and famously worked in their SOHO store, which is where he bumped into Kanye West and the story of “Mr. Rager” took off. But he’d always loved BAPE since his days in Ohio, telling Hypebeast it was “a dream come true to be able to work at the store I dreamed of shopping in one day.”
But even though he and BAPE have worked together on various smaller one-offs in the past, Cudi may have been dropping hints about this specific project since his 2019 Complex Magazine interview, saying how he’d “never had dreams of having my own clothing line. Maybe when I got older and started to get this crazy idea to become a rapper, that came with me thinking about all the things that I could do through that one thing, like acting or fashion… I feel like I have good enough taste, and I trust my decisions. I did two or three shirts with [founder] NIGO when he was at Bape. So that was, early on, me getting the feeling of designing a little bit.”
Source: BAPE / BAPE
The new collection should cover many of your wardrobe bases, with its jackets, sweaters, hoodies, and headgear, so you can be fully decked out in MOONMAN gear in alternating colorways. The Kid Cudi x BAPE x G-Shock DW-6900 collaboration is also finally available for purchase, which the rapper’s been teasing fans about since July of last year. It will retail for 25,000 yen, which is a little more than $236.
However, the launch is primarily targeted for BAPE’s Harajuku, Shibuya, Osaka, and Aoyama stores in Japan, and doors will be open at 10:00 a.m. JST (Japan Standard Time). So if you want to know whether physical inventory might also be available at another location, you’re advised to reach out to that store directly and find out. Otherwise, you can shop online at bape.com/collections/all or shop.kidcudi.com.
Get a better look at the entire collection below:
