How do you introduce yourself to someone you've never met?
I'm Nick. I utterly love life. I have two incredible children. And a fiancée who's my soulmate, and soon to be my wife. I believe that everything, even quarks, have consciousness, but in a way we can't possibly understand yet. And I run a clothing company called Vollebak that's creating the future of clothing.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I knew I had a love of things that were designed differently from everything else. The careers days at our school were kind of crazy. What you were offered was perhaps 0.1% of what the world could really offer.
I chose to study architecture because I loved the scale of buildings. And what I perceived as the intellectual and creative rigour that went along with designing them. I remember seeing Richard Rogers' Lloyd's building at 17 and being utterly blown away. It was an inside-out building that literally said fuck you to all other buildings.
What is the 'Fourth Age of Clothing'?
This is a concept my brother developed in a white paper. Which I didn't fully understand! So I decided to do my own research. The super simple answer is this: the First Age was the skins and grasses the hunter-gatherers wore 100,000 years ago. The Second Age was the silks and cottons that were created a few thousand years ago. Then the Third Age is the lab age, when we created textiles such as nylon and polyester. And now we are moving into the Fourth Age, where material science and biology and technology are all starting to merge to create intelligent materials beyond anything we can currently manufacture or could even conceive as possible.
Science fiction can tend to the binary – utopian or dystopian. You seem to take a more neutral, dispassionate 'what will be, will be' line. Is that fair?
I think the future is wonderful because it doesn't yet exist. Possibility is therefore infinite. It's the possibilities that I find utterly amazing as a creative. It means the only limits are those shaped by your ability to create, by your language and your mind. I picture it this way, when I go to play the piano, the piano is there, the keys are made, the strings are there waiting to get hit. And what I play is entirely my choice. The universe and our planet are the piano.
You've said, 'We make clothes you know out of materials you don't'. That idea, that the future doesn't arrive in fancy dress, seems fundamental to the way you think about what Vollebak does?
The human is a certain shape. Most of us have two arms and two legs; and we walk around. We have a head, a couple of feet and a couple of hands. Most of us are between 5ft and 6.5ft tall. So if we take this as the architecture of the human, we start off with a brilliant set of confines. And whether it's a suit or armour or a plasma skin in 3026, the human form still needs to be covered in similar ways.
"I think the future is wonderful because it doesn't yet exist. Possibility is therefore infinite."
In terms of product development, coming up with ideas, what's the first question you ask?
My first question is usually, 'How on earth does this not exist yet?' Sonic Jacket is a great example of that. It seems so obvious in my head. Firing frequencies and sound through your body is a wild idea. I also have a fundamental belief and feeling that the greatest ideas already exist in some way. And I'm simply uncovering an existing idea, unfolding it, and then running with it. And then trying to find every single path it could go down. This is an idea shared by many creatives I've worked with. It's the execution that is always the challenge – and bringing your idea to life in its purest, smartest form. And doing that with a team of brilliant, like-minded people around you.
How do you decide whether an idea is 'impossible' versus 'hasn't been done yet'? What's your process for distinguishing between the two?
I don't consider anything impossible. The only limits are time or capital, brain power and computing power. Unless we are talking about time travel, which will be a multi-millennia project.
You've also said there are three key things that clothing will do or offer or deliver in the future: medicine, neuromodulation and bionic implants. Can you talk through how that is going to pan out?
Well in every case, it's going to be the same journey as any early technology, a rollercoaster ride of madness. There's a creation phase, then an adoption phase, then a popularization phase. The game will be to make those timelines as short as possible.
"I don't consider anything impossible."
How has feedback from customers influenced product development, if at all?
The tricky thing about feedback is that in the clothing cycle, you're working at least 18 months ahead of what any customer is seeing. So when you do get feedback, it's on an idea we're probably already improving, developing and adapting. I'm my own toughest critic too as I wear and test 100% of the gear. My favourite feedback is helicopter feedback where customers understand the playing field we are in and spot opportunities for us to move into.
We are blessed with having some of the smartest customers on the planet, in terms of the roles they occupy in a vast number of industries around the world. When we launched the Spaceshop in Copenhagen, a customer brought me a space material I'd never seen and said, 'You've not used this yet – you should try it!' That's feedback I love!
You've mentioned the universe being potentially driven by consciousness. How might clothing serve as an interface for consciousness?
I'd imagine clothing eventually – in a thousand years, say – will incorporate conscious plasma skins that adapt to our mental and physical state. And to the conditions we are surrounded by. But I'd imagine that, just like right now, where we still have hunter-gatherer tribes living in the Amazon and astronauts in space, there will be divides across the human species.
What are your plans for physical retail?
As an architect, I believe in a built form as the ultimate expression of a company. Over the coming years I'd like to see quite a few of our stores pop up around the world. But I think each time they arrive, these stores have to be exceptional in some way. Maybe they are moulded entirely out of molten metal, or they're designed entirely around a sonic landscape that makes you feel like you are hallucinating and having an orgasm simultaneously.
Architecture's job is to inspire and leave you in awe. My heroes, Le Corbusier, Bjarke Ingels, Richard Rogers and James Turrell, can literally take your breath away. So any retail we do needs to do this.
Your heroes include chefs, architects and rocket designers. When you're stuck on a problem, are you more likely to look at what Hermès is doing or what SpaceX is doing?
Typically I'll look at what's not right about the process. I'm very process driven. The way we work, the way we think, and the way we are attacking the problem is typically the thing you need to adjust. This methodology is king. I most typically look at the way the top restaurants will think. They come up with a dish. They experiment endlessly to perfect it and bring it to life. Then they serve it. Then they replicate it thousands of times, to perfection. If something isn't working, I'll look at this very simple system, and ask what stage are we in? And how might they twist this moment to create a solve.
"Maybe they're designed entirely around a sonic landscape that makes you feel like you are hallucinating and having an orgasm simultaneously!"
Does the launch of the Spaceshop mark a new start for Vollebak?
It marks the start of taking Vollebak around the globe. There are so many places I want our shop to go. What's fascinating about running Vollebak is that when you meet people face to face and they see what we are doing, the appetite for it is off the charts. The challenge is simply awareness. So taking a 40ft Spaceshop round the world to let people know 'hey we exist' makes me grin. It's exactly the kind of shit I believe we should be doing!
Anything else to announce or tease?
Fireproof pants. Blue metal clothes. The Sonic Jacket that fires frequencies from 4Hz to 20,000Hz through you. Humanoids that are Vollebak fans from the future. A bomber made of rock. A belt that uses the metal we are sending to Titan. Normal run of the mill stuff!
Biggest mistake?
If you don't make mistakes, you aren't going for it. The older I get, the more I drive at risks and challenges. That means mistakes are an inevitability, but they teach you everything.
The trick is the fails should be fast, and that knowledge is then assimilated into your future behaviours.
Biggest success?
Ten ultramarathons, two wonderful children, having found my soulmate, running a company my brother and I believe we were born to create. And being able to make honourable life decisions during my time on earth.
What's the best piece of advice you've received?
Life is a train wreck. You can walk through it crying and complaining. Or you can walk through it all smiling and laughing. The choice is yours.
What are you secretly passionate about?
For the last year I've been working on a visual timeline that stretches from the birth of the universe right through to the history of humanity. Drawing a 13-billion-year timeline is fun! And you learn a lot. It's essentially Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time combined with the timeline of Sapiens. As far as I can see no one else is working on this, so I am.
What's your favourite place you've visited and why?
The Lost Lindenberg hotel in Bali. It was where I proposed to my fiancée, Dani. It's in the middle of nowhere, and the nature is utterly alive. It only has eight rooms and should be the next place they set 'The White Lotus'. I found a shell on the beach that I used to propose to Dani. It fitted her finger perfectly. You know a place is good when nature gives you gifts like that.
