Julius: An Industrial Feeling

I actually started producing clothing a little bit later in my life. So, around 23, 24. Before that it was always more graphic-based work for me. I always viewed fashion as a separate thing, and to be honest never really had an interest in clothing before then. I was always more focused on music and graphics. I look at that as a plus for us now. It creates my mind frame.

Because we don’t have those preconceptions we have more freedom in expressing ourselves. I think even now, we don’t really view it as being fashion. For us it’s almost like sculpture. With our clothing, more so than color and more so than graphics, it’s the pattern and it’s the shape. I think that sculptural mindset is still behind it.

I remember the first pieces very well. It was around 1994, and I had created a collection, based on the science fiction anime Genma Taisen. Up until then it was mostly techno scene t-shirts. But I wanted to create uniforms for the crew I was with, the artists I admired, and t-shirts weren’t enough to be able to express the world I wanted to build. Another one of the earlier collections was made for a drum & bass crew. They were very organic and acid-y, and I wanted to create something more for them as well. This was all before Julius, back in the mid-90s with my first label, Nuke.

Regis is an artist that I’ve been familiar with since my 20s. He’s always been someone that I’ve respected a lot, whether on his own or with Surgeon in British Murder Boys. I used to be a VJ and I’ve done work with their music before, so it’s always been something I’ve related to, and he is definitely one of the artists I’ve always had an interest in collaborating with. Also, thematically for that collection, we really wanted to focus on youth culture, specifically Birmingham youth culture. It was something we thought was interesting to pinpoint, and what better fit than Regis for that?

VJing is quite simply providing the imagery and visual component accompanying and working with the music. Although my work was more in line with art direction—creating flyer art, forming the image and feeling of the parties. I recall an event where the only lights were provided from flickering analog TVs. I avoided using lasers and strobes, and used to always get in arguments with the club’s lighting technicians. British Murder Boys had an event at Liquid Room here in Tokyo, and at the time I had cut up and mixed their imagery, to create the flyers and live visuals.

The way we handle clothing is with sort of a similar approach. We want to balance those two sides because they’re both a part of us. Balance is very important for us, so when we choose artists or people to collaborate with, we want it to be someone coming from a similar kind of environment. So, we felt that with Regis for sure, but we also felt it with Lotic, who played at our most recent show.

Cabaret Voltaire was such a big part of the influence behind the collection, and we really wanted to recapture that in a modern way. We were looking for another artist that would be sort of in a similar vein, but obviously not exactly the same thing, and we found that with Lotic. He struck that balance between pop, sexy, industrial, and noisy, and we realized there was no one else who could do it. Of course we drew influence from the past, but it was never a goal for us to make something that was nostalgic. We still wanted it to be facing towards the future, which is why we wanted to work with an artist we felt was on the cutting edge now. We looked at it sort of taking from the past to go towards the future.

It wasn’t a matter of us getting tired of working with black, I think that will always be there. This time I wanted to focus the direction of the collection more thematically, which I don’t think we’d done so much before. When we were doing research for it, I was listening to a lot of Swans, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, and sort of picking up from that. We really wanted to express that through the collection. Its color palette was based on the cover of Cabaret Voltaire’s Sensoria single.

Maybe it’s too much.

It’s not just a term for music. For us, the techno spirit represents being on the cutting edge, not having any sense of nostalgia, and being something that wants to move the world forward. So, we feel like that spirit can lend itself not only just to music, but also fashion and art. It’s more like an approach. It’s not one singular thing, but it’s one idea.

No, I’m not a spiritual person. I believe in strong people more than anything.

Yeah. I don’t like it. It’s house.

I don’t want to be caught up with the past. I look forward to the new, to pushing things forward. That’s more exciting. We feel like there’s a change happening right now, and we have to move forward as well.

Do you know Akira or Neuromancer? The reason I bring them up is because they match a certain feeling I get from being in the city. The best way to describe it would be that it’s like a pop feeling. I only really feel that in Tokyo and in Hong Kong. For example, I’ve never been to Dubai, but I don’t think we’d get that same type of feeling being in Dubai. Living here, it has a bit of a science fiction feeling, and that definitely influences me.

My bible.

It’s like social and cultural resistance, and also an industrial feeling.