Introducing Nycked Swimwear: A Conversation with Jules Kim

MEGAN - I'm here with Jules, and we wanna know where does the name Nycked come from? It seems like a little NY, a little play on the word "naked," possibly?

JULES - Totally! Lorenzo Martone, who's my partner, he approached me over a year go and I just launched a four-piece capsule collection of lingerie. Basically what I did was I implemented jewelry into lingerie and encouraged women to over wear their under wear. So, more or less, bring into the things that make woman intimate, formal, to the outside of their bodies.

It's amazing, he's totally amazing. I did this capsule collection of lingerie and that provided a platform for Lorenzo and a tons of other people to see my extension of design. I'm a jewelery designer and I've been designing Bijules for 7 years, but it doesn't mean that I'm just restricted only to jewelry, so that is why I started doing stuff with hair, lingerie, or whatever in order really to exercise my design muscles, so to speak.

So, after I launched that, Lorenzo is like “Shit man this girl might be it.” 'cause we wanted to do a swimwear line, 'cause he's brazilian. And you understand that in swimwear industry -

MEGAN - Everything in Brazil is fashion.

JULES - Yah it’s fashion. Swimwear is fashion. You buy a suit and you don't wear it for a whole week, you wear it once.

MEGAN - So its like a t-shirt. I buy a t-shirt to wear out tonight.

JULES - Totally. Taking that mindset, he wanted to pursue something on his own and really do something unique. What he was looking for was a creative director, an artistic director, that could really challenge and take whole this concept out and then totally push it.

MEGAN - It doesn't seem like anybody is really doing that here in the U.S. at all. We've gone to shows and they say “We're taking our swimwear to high fashion!” But, I can't name a line that is high fashion swimwear. To me when I look at your pieces, I'm “Wow that is above and beyond”

JULES - We definitely wanted to communicate something. In the swimwear industry there are definite pieces that are recycled. There are silhouettes that are in - season in, season out. There are silhouettes that are just standards within the industry. And with Bijules, we have jewelry standards. I wanna twist them. I wanna alter the way that people define these things. And, so, with swimwear, its really amazing because, yeah, there is a neglect in the industry.  There isn't a brand that is fashion forward. There is no storytelling aspect. The deepest it would go is “yeah I got laid after this bikini showing off my tit.” 

MEGAN - "I had a hot bikini"

JULES - "Yeah I totally got married 'cause I was on the beach and I was wearing this fly ass.. blah blah blah." So fill in the blank. What I do and what we do with Nycked, it’s not just about the product. It's about the sequence of events that lead to the ultimate buy. Once you're looking at it and its hanging in your closet, you’re like. "Well, shit."

MEGAN - Just this?

JULES - No!

MEGAN - Why not? Why not?

JULES - Let me tell you why not. After this...No ok.. Side note:  We were partying last night, walking down the street. There was a girl by herself, no crew, no entourage, by herself wearing a two piece bikini and high heels. And I was like “Girl you have no friends.  Where you going in that."

MEGAN - But she looked hot?

JULES - No, it was more like a gangsta-ho thing.

MEGAN - Oh so this was kinda planned?

JULES - Or not. She was out on the night by herself looking for trouble. Very clear.

MEGAN - On the corner a little bit maybe? 

JULES - Wherever dude. She found it, just walking. I was like, "Girl you got balls or you're just fucking stupid." But for example, she does not need to be wearing Nycked.

MEGAN - Please don't.

JULES - Please don't. I understand that you're on some shit, but that's not creative? That's letting the cat out of the bag. That's “OK I have no solution to what my fashion should be, so let me put on this bikini and tramp around like a tramp.” You know so, there’s..

MEGAN - That's a little sad.

JULES - Yeah, it is sad. I know this sounds weird, provided she had the option, maybe she could have. She didn't have to put herself out there, all vulnerable and shit.  I could wear this all by my lonesome, walking the streets.

MEGAN - She's like "actually I thought about until I saw this girl on the street."

JULES - And Lady Gaga can have all that panty rage shit.

MEGAN - It’s all hers. Keep it.

JULES - Go ahead. Go for it. With Nycked, because there was a dip in the marketplace, that there were no fashion forward speaking brands in the industry, we just dove in head first. It worked out. We’re really proud of what we’ve done. It took us a year to build the brand, because with everything that we do it's all very strategic. We only have a very limited amount of energy. All of us as workers, and New Yorkers, etc..
So you have to understand you have to pick your battles. You have to choose carefully. Working with Lorenzo we’re: “we sort of love each other, you're sort of cool, I think we're gonna do it,“ and then we did it. And, yeah, lo-and-behold, we're really good friends. We mesh really well. We work really well together. And also having a partnership, have a business with someone, at some point, if someone can't do something that's the beauty of having a partner. With Bijules, “Shit! I have to be at 6 different places at the same time. Oh my god, how am I gonna do this?”

MEGAN - Call in your twin?

JULES - Exactly.

MEGAN - I have a sister.

JULES - Oh really?

MEGAN - I’m like “Can you go to this event for me maybe?”

JULES - Oh my god, that’s so sweet.

MEGAN - Well sometimes that doesn’t work out, as sweet as it sounds.

JULES - Exactly

MEGAN - It’s like "You’re going to the event."

JULES - Yah totally. Just do this.

MEGAN - You’re going with me.

JULES - I would adore if my twin were to get involved. But she’s got her own little life. And all I'm asking for is support from people that like what I do and respect what I do. Given that circumstance, I’m like, "yah I got six places to be, y'all gotta fucking merge. Let's make this happen all at once."

MEGAN - Do it.

JULES - It's sort of the embodiment of what's going on here, have a shit ton of clients that wanna come through. They wanna see the story behind the brand. They wanna see the pieces. They wanna touch them. They wanna understand the concept behind the brand because it’s so unique and so important.

MEGAN - It's so different.

JULES - So, in that vein, it’s been a really been sort of an epic kind of event for us. Because we only launched only a few weeks ago with WWD and I utter Saks fifth avenue in that article and then, lo-and-behold, three days later I get a facebook message from the buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue.

MEGAN - So where do you see you distributing it then?

JULES - We don't want our consumers and our clients to feel as if they’ve been excluded.  We want it to be an inclusive experience but an exclusive distribution. We're going to be launching with Harvey Nichols; England exclusive. We're talking to Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, the Bay in Canada. These, and Saks Fifth Avenue. We want to start with a very tightly edited collection and also be really strategic about its placement because we’re not here to be a flash in the pan. We don't want to make noise, fizzle out and then there's nothing but a smoldering smoke thats left in our absence. That means nothing. We haven't done shit with the swimwear industry, then we can't exist, you know. So in order for us to be a stable brand, clearly its going to take time, so all we need to do is be really planned and methodical and everything has to be on purpose. We don't want to find ourselves in conflict with something we tried to do six months earlier what our future potential for our brand will be. We don't want any of that to counteract, so in that vein, we're really being tight about who walks in here. You know, my door's not open if you’ve noticed.

MEGAN - When it is the ghost comes in.

JULES - All the doors are open here, and I understand it's about making money, but we've just launched and I can't have people just strolling in here and perusing through here; through my blood sweat and tears, with no explanation. I've got to be selective about who walks through that doors