Bathing Ape: The Great Ripoff

SO here I am in Hong Kong doing some clothes shopping and it occurs to me "Hey, why not look for the ill hard to find threads?"

I see every other person wearing Bathing Ape apparel and so I assume that it must be popular = affordable. At most, i expect a t-shirt to cost maybe $35-40 given the nature of the label.

WRONG

Shop after shop is hawking Bathing Ape t-shirts....fucking T-SHIRTS.........for $90-120 a pop. Did I miss something here? Since when did a t-shirt cost upwards of an 1/8 of my travel budget?

It's not like the shirt is made of silk or the pubic hair of virgins.....it's just plain ass cotton with a KAWS graphic going for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. A t-shirt....printed for pennies on the dollar and then is sold for massive cash. Can you say FLEECING?

A pox on Bathing Ape and that cash monger KAWS for this. An even bigger pox on people that put out the cash for stuff like this and encouraging it. These are T-Shirts you idiots...not collectables that you seal in Mylar bags and allow to accrue value over time. I swear....graffiti writers are becoming the new comic book nerds on the real.

SO today, i am going down to the market place and buying four or five boot leg, knock off bathing ape shirt i can find. Fuck this shit. Time for a drink

wow i wonder if more people wear the bootleg ones? if not that company is making good good money if every other person is wearing one.

Originally posted by LENS@Oct 10 2005, 09:32 PM

It's not like the shirt is made of silk or the pubic hair of virgins.....

Quoted post

That isn't really that rare, look at how ugly some of the people on myspace are.

I agree. did they like buy the AF1 model from Nike and get rights to reproduce it or something?

Are you seriously asking since when has BAPE been expensive?

fuck if they're expensive, everyone knows that. i wanna know what's up with these NIKE BAPEs?

what is shai hulud typing, anyway?

hes probably afk

Originally posted by courtorder@Oct 10 2005, 11:51 PM

fuck if they're expensive, everyone knows that. i wanna know what's up with these NIKE BAPEs?

Quoted post

Theyre called BAPESTAs.

...yea that bathing ape shit is a'ight. All the buzz is interesting, but the gear is way too much money. When the shoes first dropped they were at least 3 bills...i was like...man, them shits ain't all that damn hot.

yeah, BAPESTA's are still about 3 bills.

Wayyyy too fucking expensive. Not my ish really, I copped one pair on ebay because kids slept on them and I only paid about 1/3 the price, but other than that.. blech.

Better off copping a pair of quickstrike nikes for $130.

Thats why the BAPE's are so expensive though, theyre all "quickstrike" and have custom colorways. But basically unless you're fat joe, theyre not worth your money.

a bathing ape has always been expensive, for what seems just normal goods. my friend bought the kaws bape green camo hoodie for like 500 bucks, and i nearly shat my pants. i would never on earth spend that amount of dough on just a hoodie. to each his own though.

i'm not a fan of their stuff, but if i were given the chance to wear their shit for free, i would. but fuck paying enormous amounts of money to look like a walking rainbow

if you dont like the company or lable...( which i dont) why would u go outa your way to wear bootleg?

people are paying top doller to get down with the Image / trend ... theres nothing worth the price of that crud...

I gotta ask you this.

A Certain Writer From PVC that I went to high school with just bought a house in SF, according to reliable sources (mutual friends). I also heard that he was doing design work in Japan and that he had a successful T-shirt line there, as well. This is in addition to his artist assistant gig, and his own art career, which seems to be doing well.

So, let's say his shirts sold for $80 a pop...I'll cut him a little slack.

The average Victorian in the Mission goes for around $1,000,000.

He gets about 1/3 of the retail in royalties, or something like that...I don't talk to him these days, and even if I did, I wouldn't ask. Rounded up, that works out to $27 a shirt, his way.

That means if he sold 38,000 T-shirts, he gets a house out of the deal. For a sense of how this could be possible, imagine every single 12 ozer shelling out eighty bucks, plus tax, and you'll see that it isn't that difficult.

All thanks to marketing our culture. Whoopee.

On one hand, I admire his initiative...but, I just...don't...know.

In theory, he writes on walls...sometimes legally, sometimes not....and, he's a millionaire.

If you're referring to me, they're not knock offs. They're a pair of shoes that were poorly advertised on ebay and I ended up capitalizing.

Yeah kids are paying to get down with the trend/image, the same way kids are trying to whore graffiti style artwork on ebay.

Go home and paint some more knock-off of Dalek AF1s.

Originally posted by Glik0@Oct 11 2005, 04:24 AM

If you're referring to me, they're not knock offs. They're a pair of shoes that were poorly advertised on ebay and I ended up capitalizing.

 

Yeah kids are paying to get down with the trend/image, the same way kids are trying to whore graffiti style artwork on ebay.

 

Go home and paint some more knock-off of Dalek AF1s.

Quoted post

lens-SO today, i am going down to the market place and buying four or five boot leg, knock off bathing ape shirt i can find. Fuck this shit. Time for a drink

A rich friend of my mums, who drives a $80,000 car only rocks fakes lables (LV bags etc) the reason for this is that she says that because shes rich people just assume its real, which goes to show that people dont actually enjoy the quality of the labels/designs but are more concerned with other peoples perceptions on them.

Paying more than $40 for a t-shirt, specialized or not is just robbing yourself.

fatbastard - that is so true

idk its like the new thing is tee lables they are popin up everywhere shirts with stuipd designs but sorta have a strong marketing aproch end up sucking kids into paying 50-100 bucks for a tee.

Originally posted by fatbastard@Oct 11 2005, 04:29 AM

 

Paying more than $40 for a t-shirt, specialized or not is just robbing yourself.

Quoted post

Thank you for summing up my arguement so concisely

I don't remember the last time i paid a cent more than $10 for a tshirt.

street vendors sell t-shirts for $5 sometimes... that works for me.

basically as far as the shoes go...

yes they are the "hot" shit right now..

yes rich chinese and japenese kids are rocking these things because they can.

yes they can charge exactly what they want because people will pay it.

american people are the worlds "whores" when it comes to indulgence.. people will pay 300, 400 for these shoes.

one thing is DEF for sure...

there are MORE fakes out there that look real as hell with almost no sign of them not being not authentic.

(the reason behind the "realness" of the fakes is some poor starving asian person with five kids working at the NIKE factory or BAPE factory steals the mold and sells it to someone who pays them tons of money and then that person turns around and makes their version of the NIKE AF1 with cheaper material. this happens all over asia) hence the reasn for the high prices.

* point being- if you want the real authentic steez, shut up and pay up.

i dig bape shit, but it's really, really pricy.

i have a wristband that i paid a ridiculous amount of money for, considering it's a wristband. it was one of my more immature purchases.

most of the time, bapestas look like clown shoes. i mean the more subtle ones are fresh, but the shiny ass patent leather ones...no thanks.

it's cool design though, nigo usually comes on point. he also just got signed to def jam, for some reason.

by the way,

ice creams > bapestas

wow, it's amazing that people pay so much for that shit. makes no sense to me

Originally posted by LENS@Oct 10 2005, 09:32 PM

I swear....graffiti writers are becoming the new comic book nerds on the real.

Quoted post

f'real suckers

steal.

hey sheep buy up, the herders are hungry. fashion is a joke.

Just get a job, then you can think 'yea it's expensive, but fuck it."

I bought a flashlight for £40.

http://www.surefire.com

Niggas know.

What the fuck...

I wouldn't ever shell out more than 20 bucks for a T-Shirt.

But for the past few years I haven't worn anything but plain black tees.

5 for $20 holler.

BUT DOG ITS LIMITED EDITION :rolleyes: