The Bored Ape Yacht Club is collaborating with another Ape-themed brand from the fashion world—Japanese streetwear icon BAPE, or A Bathing Ape.
Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs confirmed the crossover Monday evening after a tease on Twitter earlier in the day. The teaser showed a cartoonish drawing of a t-shirt in a closet with both BAPE and Bored Ape imagery on it. “Been a fan since way back when,” the tweet reads. BAPE then quote-tweeted it.
According to Yuga, the collaboration will first take the form of a physical streetwear drop that will be available in limited quantities during the Bored Apes’ ApeFest Hong Kong event in November.
“Together, the two brands have reimagined iconic designs from BAPE’s deep archives and usher in a return to the golden age of streetwear collecting,” an official press release notes.
Initially, the apparel will only be released at ApeFest Hong Kong and online through a token-gated portal for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT owners. After that, further quantities will be released to holders of BAPE’s own Bapetaverse NFT project. Finally, the collection will be released to the public through BAPE stores and the online BAPE shop in December.
“It may come as no surprise that we’re fans, and we know a lot of members of the Bored Ape Yacht Club are too,” said Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano, in a release. “BAYC collaborating with BAPE on a limited physical collection feels like the most natural thing in the world.”
Founded by fashion designer and entrepreneur Tomoaki “Nigo” Nagao in 1993, A Bathing Ape is a prominent streetwear brand that has done a vast array of collaborations with various brands and creators, ranging from Marvel and Nintendo to Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, and beyond.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is arguably the most prominent IP to come out of the NFT market, generating nearly $3 billion in trading volume for the main collection to date, per data from CryptoSlam, along with about $4 billion more from spinoff and subsequent collections.
Yuga Labs has done official collaborations with storied fashion brands like Adidas and Gucci, while NFT holders—including rappers Snoop Dogg and Eminem—have used their owned Bored Ape artwork to create merchandise and derivative projects via IP commercialization rights.
Editor’s note: This article was updated after publication to add details of the confirmed collaboration, following the initial teaser.
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