"Those right there are the hottest ones," said one wide-eyed young man, pointing at a pair in lime green and black. He and his fellow gawkers were standing in front of the first American outpost of A Bathing Ape, the urban street wear chain that has been wildly popular in Japan for over a decade, the day after the store's opening. It was a scene that Nigo (pronounced NEE-go), the soft-spoken, 33-year-old designer behind the Bathing Ape line and Japan's reigning king of cool, had seen many times before. "They're like eye candy," he said of his creations.

IT was not the chic designer dresses in the entrance of the Kirna Zabête boutique or the lingerie-clad mannequins of La Perla that stopped foot traffic on Greene Street in SoHo last Monday afternoon, but something a bit more, ahem, pedestrian: sneakers. Twelve pairs — in vivid, whimsical color combinations like robin's-egg blue and yellow and Baskin-Robbins pink and brown — were circling around in a storefront window on what looked like a miniature baggage carousel, and a small crowd of hipsters and tourists had gathered to watch.

"Those right there are the hottest ones," said one wide-eyed young man, pointing at a pair in lime green and black. He and his fellow gawkers were standing in front of the first American outpost of A Bathing Ape, the urban street wear chain that has been wildly popular in Japan for over a decade, the day after the store's opening. It was a scene that Nigo (pronounced NEE-go), the soft-spoken, 33-year-old designer behind the Bathing Ape line and Japan's reigning king of cool, had seen many times before. "They're like eye candy," he said of his creations.

The SoHo Bathing Ape is the 16th store in Nigo's ever-expanding empire, which began in 1993 as a hole-in-the-wall T-shirt shop in the Harajuku district in Tokyo and now includes clothing outlets across Tokyo and in Kyoto, Osaka and London.