Shopping

It’s 3am on a freezing-cold Saturday morning in February and a group of twentysomething men are camped outside the cult Japanese clothing store A Bathing Ape in Soho. The shop doesn’t open until 11am and many are in sleeping bags. One has flown in from Japan. All are here just to purchase a limited-edition T-shirt. Which is a bit like flying to Tokyo for a Paul Smith top. Feature continues

Trainer collector Patricia Ng

Welcome to the obsessive world of limited-edition collectors. In Japan, where queueing for cult brands is as much of an afternoon social activity as dossing around McDonald’s is in England, they call people like this otaku, gadget geeks who catalogue and hunt down things that you and I might have – trainers, records, toys – but with subtle, barely noticeable differences. A Nike swoosh might come in a peculiar colour, a record might have a remix or bonus track the general release didn’t. It’s nonsense to most people, but among knowing groups of otaku these details are hugely important.

This collective madness has now hit London where increasingly people will queue in the rain, stampede through fashion stores, pull sickies from work or even sleep out overnight just to get their hands on a new limited-edition T-shirt, handbag or pair of trainers. And when they do get to the front of the queue, they’ll buy two or three at a time. Trainer collectors such as 22-year-old London student Patricia Ng (far right) will even spend hundreds of pounds a month on styles which, to you and me, are only imperceptibly different from each other.

Sometimes these products serve to capture a moment in time. For instance, a pair of limited-edition Nike Air Force Ones released to celebrate Jay-Z’s retirement as a recording artist went on sale for £1,000 in Slammin Kicks trainer shop in Soho. The only thing that distinguished them from normal Air Force Ones was the logo of Jay-Z’s record label Roc-A-Fella on the heel of the shoe. In a similar way, everything from Xbox consoles and cufflinks, to mobile phones, trainers, sweets, and even a one-off Triumph/ Umbro Bonneville motorbike painted in England colours have been launched to ‘celebrate’ the World Cup.

These days it’s not just bloke’s stuff either. Barely a week goes by without some kind of limited-edition make-up or beauty product hitting the market. But what is the point of a limited-edition Shiseido moisturiser? As pretty as the ‘limited-edition’ Celia Birtwell dresses at Topshop are, how limited can any Topshop product really be? According to sources, over 5,000 of some garments are made. New Zealand designer Karen Walker recently designed a ‘limited-edition’ compact for Boots 17 – it turned out limited edition for Boots meant 10,000 units. So what’s the attraction?