NIGO is not a name most people associate with aviation. The Japanese creative director founded A Bathing Ape in 1993, built Human Made in 2010, took the artistic director role at KENZO in 2021, and has presented collections three times with Louis Vuitton.
He also collects cars, art and objects with the kind of seriousness that comes from three decades of knowing exactly what good design looks like. Now he has designed a private jet, and the company behind it is selling fractional ownership shares to anyone who wants to co-own what is, by any measure, one of the more unusual aircraft currently in existence.
The aircraft is a Gulfstream G500, one of the most capable jets in the large-cabin category, chosen as the base for a reason. The G500 has a maximum range of around 9,816km, enough for a nonstop flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles or Sydney, a cruising speed of up to 980km/h, and a maximum altitude of 15,545 metres. It carries 14 of the largest windows in business aviation, which flood the cabin with natural light at cruising altitude. The cabin itself splits into three living areas, a galley and a lavatory, and Gulfstream engineered the interior to be quiet enough for a normal conversation without raising your voice, which on a jet travelling at close to the speed of sound is an achievement worth noting.
NIGO handled the creative direction from the fuselage to the cabin details. The proposed exterior finish is a matte deep olive green body with a copper-hued lower half, a colour pairing that sits in the same territory as his approach to clothing and product design, considered, specific, and completely unlike anything else on the ramp. The interior continues that logic, though the exact cabin specification hasn’t been publicly detailed in full. What has been confirmed is that NIGO treated the aircraft as a complete design object rather than a vehicle with an interior added to it, which is a different brief than most jet operators give their designers and produces a different result.
The ownership structure is handled by NOT A GARAGE, the mobility company operating under the NOTA group that also runs NOT A HOTEL, the Japanese hospitality concept built around architecturally considered properties that owners can use like private houses and rent out when they’re not there. The model translates directly to the jet. Rather than requiring a single buyer to acquire, operate, insure and maintain the aircraft outright, NOT A GARAGE sells fractional ownership shares that divide those obligations while maintaining access to the plane as a personal asset. Operations, maintenance, crew training, and insurance are managed by NOT A GARAGE and its operating partner. Owners book flights through an app, pre-order food prepared by chefs from the NOT A HOTEL group, and receive a dedicated chauffeur from anywhere within Tokyo’s 23 wards to Narita or Haneda airports.
The aircraft is based at Narita. Flights are scheduled to begin in December 2027. Fractional ownership is available now through NOT A GARAGE, with a waiting list open for anyone who missed the initial allocation.
The G500 new lists at around $46 million USD before interior completion and customisation. The NIGO JET, as a one-of-one custom aircraft operated through a shared ownership model, sits in a different category to anything Gulfstream’s standard configurator produces. NOT A GARAGE has not publicly disclosed the per-share price, which is consistent with how the company handles property sales through NOT A HOTEL and is probably consistent with what fractional ownership of a NIGO-designed aircraft should cost.
