I was just looking over my senior thesis about A Bathing Ape, and in one part, I mention that Nigo was on the cover of three street fashion magazines — Boon, Asayan, and Thrill — in August 2000. During the summer of 2000 when I did the core of my research, all the fashion elites I interviewed said “Ape is dead,” but I felt that these magazine covers questioned the validity of that statement.

Anyway, I was shocked to realize that none of these titles still exist. Boon changed to B. earlier this year and then ceased publication for good. Asayan was the street fashion magazine of the Ura-Harajuku movement, so I can see why it drifted into obscurity sometime in the early 21st century. I don’t even remember what Thrill was about.

Not that this observation really means anything, but I tend to forget how different the media landscape was just eight years ago. I often note that A Bathing Ape almost never appears in mainstream fashion menswear magazines, but maybe that’s because all the pro-Ura-Hara ones went under.