A Bathing Ape – Taipei city camo
A Bathing Ape features many different camo designs and colorways. My favorite design is the city camo series. Bape has less than two dozen retail stores worldwide, and each one has a distinctive colorway that represents the store. These are exclusively sold at the representative stores, i.e. clothing with the Hong Kong city camo design can only be bought at the Hong Kong Bape store. The idea is to let fans “rep their hood”, so to speak. (The city camo colorways [1], [2])
My favorites are the three Tokyo stores and Taipei, which have a more monotone camo pattern compared to some of the outrageous color combinations for other cities. All city camo products are produced in very limited quantities so are usually difficult to find on the resell market after the initial release. From my experience, Taipei is especially rare. The city camo polos were released a few weeks ago, and I made sure to grab the Taipei one as soon as I saw one.
I’m not one of those guys who like wearing pink, but the pink/purple combo of the Taipei design won me over somehow. This is a quality polo shirt. In terms of sizing, I wear large Bape T-shirts but their polo measurements are different so I bought a medium size polo.
The city camo shark hoodies were released in January 2008. I picked up Aoyama and Harajuku, but saved Taipei for a later date due to budgeting reasons. That was a mistake as it took literally one full year of regularly scanning the Yahoo Japan auctions before I saw another one pop up for sale. (By the way, yes I am aware that Yahoo Taiwan is a better place to find Taipei city camo items, but I don’t trust the sellers there and it’s much more convenient for me to buy through Yahoo Japan).
The shark hoody is by far my favorite Bape item and is how I first discovered and fell in love with the brand. What follows are some random Taipei shark hoody photos that I found. I’ve always liked this photo by diehard fan Butinkuo
January 2nd, 2008 — the line outside the Taipei Bape store on the release date of the city camo shark hoody. The people already wearing the hoody are store employees.
Taipei camo is certainly a bit “loud”, and it takes a certain type of persona to pull it off. Whether I have that quality is questionable, but I still love wearing this hoody.
