Ocularis: VIEWFINDER
Having tuned his depth of vision in the fashion industry for a decade, Canterbury’s Nick Biela has altered his focus to new brand, Oculāris, writes Joe Bill
On a cold, wet night in London in 2012, a dimly lit stairway in Shoreditch was to provide both a shelter from the rain and a vision into the future. This was a time before East London had been oversubscribed with hip; it was still flirting with the idea of what it was to become. Still fresh.
My ticket was taken in exchange for a poker chip as revellers queued and descended under an office building and into a wall of pumping music and transfixed gawpers. It was dark, really dark; with the only real light coming from the DJ booth, the bar (where we exchanged our poker chips for drinks), and the wall where images of clothing and models was projected. The most underground street-style fashion launch that would have been seen up to that point. It was the birth of Blood Brother; but to me, a green lad from Kent, it was also the birth of possibility.
I was fortunate enough to know the mind behind the Blood Brother brand, Nicholas Biela, and was mesmerised by what he had achieved in just a couple of years after leaving the London College of Fashion. It wasn’t a surprise when the brand got picked up and thrust into the limelight bagging spots in every major department store in London - that’s Selfridges, Harrods, Harvey Nicholls, Liberty - and was pictured hanging off the limbs of international hip hop stars and the who’s who of cool. It was an independent retail and design success story that continues to this day. It was only when I reconnected with Nick (as I know him) over pizza in Spitalfields Market, that I found that a whole new story was beginning.
© Ocularis 2020
“Blood Brother was my baby. I started the brand, conceived it, thought about it and built the whole dynamic of what it was going to be,” says Nick.
“With my business partner James (Waller), we came together with our separate skill sets and collectively created something quite unique and special. At the start, streetwear wasn’t really talked about in the main echelon of fashion and we were a real success story within that, you know. We were in - and we were doing very well.”
Nick left Blood Brother - while retaining shares - a year ago due to directional differences.
“Where we were misfortunate, was just due to the fragility of the fashion industry,” he explains. “We were making new products twice a year. Within that we had a supplementary income from running other businesses and we had some issues that made us have to change direction.”
The business was then licensed - an arrangement in which one company gives another company permission to manufacture its product for a specified payment.
“At which point I didn’t want to be inside of that, with its new direction, which was far more commercial, and looking like making a drive to be a more widespread brand, seeing income as its main priority.
“I’m a creative, and I want a sense of meaning when I go to work. As much as possible, I have to feel comfortable with what I am working on. That’s not a luxury that everyone has, but, for me, I didn’t go and study finance, I studied a creative degree because I really care about what I do and I think that is really important for happiness.”
© Ocularis 2020
OCULARIS
The Oculāris concept is based on having a shared vision; both in terms of how we as people see things around us (with ‘ocular’ being the latin for eye) but also the importance of working together and collaborating.
“With everything that I try to do, it is always very inclusive,” says Nick. “Having something in the title that presumes it to be shared is really important. On Blood Brother, it was about togetherness (the ‘welcome to the Brotherhood’ taglines), having unrelated people being apart of a harmonious existence.
“With every form of media you need others fan your flames and champion you and to see themselves as part of something you are creating. You could be the best designer in the world, but if nobody sees your work, then it is kind of redundant.”
A huge focus for the brand has been the development of collaborations with musicians, even to the point of providing artists with bespoke pieces to wear while they performed at the Oculāris launch event.
“I have always been interested in working with music,” says Nick. “We all listen to music every day. I use it as inspiration and often motivation, when I’m at the end of my tether, I can put on some music that really drives me through.
“I feel this appreciation for musicians and want to utilise artists to be vessels for my brand.
“Clothing is on people. It’s not meant for a gallery. It's to be worn. So to have people wearing your clothing, particularly musicians, there is that rebellious atmosphere, attitude and spirit that makes my job designing easy, giving me a muse, as such.”
© Ocularis 2020
SPACE TO COMMUNICATE
A former pupil of the Simon Langton School in Canterbury, Nick says he was always into clothing and to being ‘a bit different’ when it came to dress sense.
“I think to want to have an individual trait in your personality shows an intelligent communication device, maybe just to stimulate conversation with another,” he says. “For me, I love all aspects of meeting people, so maybe deep down it was wanting to draw attention to myself to court conversation or whatever.”
Communication is the centre thread to which all others are tied in the Oculāris brand, and it started with a research tour that was out of this world.
“During the last year I’ve been to Roswell, the UFO archives, Area 51 and the Extra Terrestrial Highway in Nevada,” he says. “They are all these special, curious, blocked-off places in the US.
“It was built in to part of the research into using my brand as a communication device.”
A visit to the Very Large Array (Radio Telescope Facility) in New Mexico - which, until very recently, had the furthest reach of humankind into space - opened up new ideas as to using Oculāris clothing to transcend a message.
“As humans, we are a very friendly and warm creature and we are actually beaming out radio waves that reach deep into stellar Space.
“But we are beaming with open minds, not beaming messages of war. And I find that very humbling and sweet. All the troubles we have on Earth, that when we actually go out to seek other life, it isn’t in an aggressive way.
“Essentially communication is interesting to me, from talking to aliens to working with artists, to how we communicate and having an original form of communication through printing onto a denim jacket.”
Nick is currently working on the 2020 Autumn/Winter collection, a year ahead of time, in the hope of attracting retailers to take Oculāris into their stores. Meanwhile the current collection, which includes a fascinating print featuring a microscopic photograph of a DNA cell that has been warped, continues to be on sale at Oculāris.world.
“It is still contemporary clothing influenced by streetwear,” says Nick. “There is much less opportunity to wear sartorial or tailored clothes now, than 30 years ago. “So until I am regularly being invited to dinners and dances I think it's cool to have jackets, hoodies, t-shirts. For me I think casual the way forward but with art and direction.”
© Ocularis 2020
Oculāris represents yet another independent brand that is doing things in the right way; connecting with its customers and caring about its product. But it is also fighting the good fight, supporting UK traders with their choice of fabrics. Its focus on communicating with its consumers properly and collaborating with the voices of the future just echoes Nick’s own views on modern retail.
“People should back independent businesses,” he says. “Whether it is a magazine or a brand. It is too easy to go on to Amazon or shopping at Tesco for all your needs. That in itself is a dangerous habit to get into.
“It’s important to share in people’s creative visions, in various different ways; there is something about that which is very special and we should pay more attention to it, because it’s what makes the world go round.”
The Oculāris Instagram account is an amazing tool for seeing the brand’s development from concept stage and research photos, through to the intricate detail and influences of the garments now being released. Quality over quantity is the name of the game.
“There used to be a really good independent store in Canterbury called Neon, which has now closed down,” says Nick “I used to save all my money and buy clothes in there. Even thinking about it now, I used to spend more on something particular than spending little on lots of different clothes, and that’s the battle we have today with fast fashion.
“Buying into a brand and the concept, and reading about it makes a lot sense, gives a much closer relationship with the product you buy and you want to keep it longer. And that’s really important factor given the waste the industry is producing at the moment.”
With the next season due to be released at the time we go to print, I’m certainly excited to see where the Oculāris brand will take its foray into the world of collaboration and communication. I suppose it could go in any direction.
“That’s the beauty of fashion, you can change the way you look” adds Nick. “You can go out every morning and decide who you choose to be. It’s a luxury we all have.”