A BATHING AP (PART 1)
🦍 Why a BAPEX may the best watch of all time (for me)
I’m struggling to start this week’s letter to the peoples in a meaningful or insightful way because I really want to get down to the crux of this article that’s essentially just post-justifying a #NWA1.
I bought a Type 9 BAPEX®, because it looks cool and says BAPE on it. That’s pretty much it. It’s not a good watch.
It’s not a good watch but this is the funniest watch I will ever own and maybe the most important watch I’ll own. It is me to a tee, so let me explain.
1017 ALYX 9SM X MAD PARIS X AUDEMARS PIGUET ROYAL OAK
Coming up to 5 years ago Matthew Williams, proprietor of label 1017 ALYX 9SM (and recent helm of LVMH’s Givenchy) commissioned customizers MAD Paris to do a riff on the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. It had this type of, ‘eye-catching minimalism’ that is designed to catch your attention immediately and admittedly, not offer much of substance afterward. It fit into the ALYX apparel universe quite nicely and was an AP designed to not be as ostentatious as the ones before it. They decided to do a run of 40 watches aimed less at the watch world and more at fashionland - I remember you could visit the SSENSE website and add it to your cart! ALYX and Matthew Williams have since been legitimized with an official collaboration with Audemars Piguet.
Coming up to 5 years ago I was on my regular doomscroll of a predominately streetwear and sneaker based Instagram feed when this exact picture of the aforementioned Royal Oak appeared on the seminal Instagram moodboard Hidden.NY. Long story short I do a bit of Googling and buy a CasiOak as my first big boy watch as a mortal man’s substitute for owning the ALYX AP. Then I go down the rabbit hole.
The ALYX x MAD Paris Audemars Piguet got me into watches.
A BATHING APE IN LUKEWARM WATER
I’ll try keep it short and sweet but this is a large cultural topic. If you don’t even know what BAPE is the fashion video essay channel Threaducation has a nice overview and Highsnobiety has a nice article. At it’s core it’s a Japanese streetwear label, founded by fashion designer NIGO. The family tree of this label in terms of fashion, music and pop culture could fill a hefty ass book. The cultural ramifications of BAPE are still being felt today. Especially with the recent resurgence of a Y2K aesthetic in the larger zeitgeist, I won’t be surprised if we very soon started returning to the visually loud stuff that affects BAPE in some way, shape or form.
No matter what you think of the brand in it’s current zombie form, if you are an Asian millennial like me (or just cognizant of stuff around 2005) you aspired to BAPE. To relate it to some watchiverse marketing — I didn’t know anyone growing up that aspired to have a Rolex. I still to this day have absolutely no idea who a Paul Newman is. Stuff like that is just not in our cultural vocabulary. It was BAPE.
An equivalent would be a TAG Formula 1 (apparently according to the recent watch discourse of everyone an age bracket above me!), or a Jordan 1 (the same age bracket it seems) or whatever object of desire of your youth you want — the aspirational object for us is BAPE. You wanted a BAPESTA. You wanted a BAPE hoodie (I had a fake DC one!). As a kid every cool older guy as I knew wore at least one article of BAPE at all times. If you had the BAPESTAs or were rolling around in a shark hoodie then you were king.
For what seems like a very specific time culminating and peaking with the release of Tokyo Drift (greatest movie of all time) BAPE stood as a singular and monumental cultural touchstone in both the East and West and especially for those like me in between. BAPE has a pointed and extreme influence in the way I currently dress (not like the above don’t worry, but I do tend toward primary colors), what music I listen to right now and as a working digital artist it is an astoundingly clear path from BAPE to the art I create professionally and personally day-to-day. Pharrell still works with BAPE’s original founder NIGO as well! The spirit of BAPE in culture today still looms.
BAPE got me into sneakers and streetwear. BAPE got me into popular culture at large.
TYPE 9 BAPEX®
So then this pops on my feed. I hope you see what I’m getting at here.
When I see this Instagram post, I FREAK the fuck out and start laughing like Dr. Cortex at Crash Bandicoot. Of couuuuuuuurse Imma buy the shit out of this watch I know that shit is stoooopid but they gonna be takin my dollaz prontooooo.
I imagine this is how that certain generation of people feel about the recent relaunch of the TAG Heuer Formula 1 with KITH. Core memories are core memories. If you were around it means alot! Even if the watch is sorta bad? Anyway a lot of us are down at least $1000 dollars right now because of nostalgia and a desperate attempt to validate our childhood in 2024.
So here it is man here’s my cosmic baby of a watch. The bracelet is terrible (I mean the clasp is kinda nice but it’s not the special ALYX AP clasp). The finish is exactly as you expect (terrible). The dial is brushed. Brushed terribly. It’s machined… terribly but at first glance it looks nice I think? It is out-and-out maybe at best a 4/10 homage watch. People make fun of a Hublot’s misaligned screws but at least they have screws. You do not really realize the importance of the screws to the Royal Oak design until they are taken away from you. The porthole design just becomes a… hole design. Butthole. This watch is cheeks 🤷. It sucks lol
A 4/10 homage watch is also absolutely the most important watch in my collection because at this point it is personal. It sort of validates my larger collection in a way — proving that I am indeed, ‘buying what I like’ as unhelpful as that old cliché is. I gotta buy it man. Imagine if you were a diver without a dive watch? Or in a field without a field watch? What are you stupid? Me as a streetwearmans, has gotta have this in the same way I gotta have my spread of G-Shocks. What is me without a BAPE watch? Having this BAPEX is simply key to my survival in the often too serious watchiverse2.
I think it wears well on me because it’s the best representation of who I am3. Unless I make my own watch (👀) or have something completely done from ground up for me, I anticipate that this BAPEX will be the best representation of me for a while. So it’s currently cemented it’s place in the core collection. Good beater at least.
This stuff should be personal to you, right? If you keep collecting grounded to your own story and not co-opt another one I think you’ll end up buying some weird and amazing watches that nobody else would collect. Your watch collection should say something about you right? RIGHT?!4
Following this strategy, if you put your watches in amongst your local meetup’s watchdump (I refuse to call it anything else 🙅) on a table shouldn’t you be able to immediately identify which watch is yours? I know I’ll immediately be able to identify mine as I’ll be the only dumbass in the room that’s brought a BAPEX. And that’s a good feeling.
I’ve worn this out and about in the city a fair few times. Once a guy in a suit asked if it was an AP. I just said it was a copy. He wasn’t into watches or streetwear so I couldn’t explain the avant-garde-triple-post-irony-circling-back-to-complete-seriousness situation that I am writing about now. But I guess it’s a compliment (?) to the ol’ Type 9 BAPEX®. Maybe next time I’ll work my way up to a Bulova Royal Oak and then finally a normal Royal Oak. Then along with my HUF CasiOak I could have the world’s best collection of, ‘Royal Oaks at a Distance’. Sotheby’s would never hold that auction because they are cowards.
It’s always been in the back of my mind to buy a lil’ BAPEX for myself to keep a link to my love of streetwear in my watch collection and it’s just funny that this exact one came along.
I haven’t bought a mechanical watch in 3 years. THREE YEARS and this stupidass watch got me back in.
Much like the original watch that it’s paying "homage” to got me into watches in the first place.
Cosmic huh? #NWA This stupid Bapex. Objectively bad watch. One of the best watches of all time (for me).
PART 2 coming hopefully soon™. KITH. MoonSwatch. MSCHF. Lawsuits. Dadaism. Homages. More BAPEXs? Stay tuned! 🫡
New watch alert. Hey I found the footnotes button!
Watch related humor is some of the most tepid, flaccid, balding (and I’m a bald guy) humor I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen more wife jokes per square meter in this hobby than I have anywhere else in the observable universe. Brodinkee rules tho.
Terrible and a bit confused?
If you have a stock Speedy/stock Rolex/mildly offbeat Cartier spread I will steal them from you and force you to buy 12 differently colored G-Shocks