Communicating Via Fashion

WE KILL BIKE THIEVESVIGILANTEISM IN FASHION

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With his passion for communication and fashion, Christopher Wakefield is the voice behind the WE KILL BIKE THIEVES t-shirts and, along with his business partner Dustin Cote, he is the creator of the Ouroboros brand of cycling clothing. His degree in English and diploma from the Fashion Marketing Program at Kwantlen College in Vancouver, along with a passion for riding has led him to create this new brand of street wear. “Really I was just expressing my personal frustrations and the frustrations of my immediate community,” he says of designing their flagship graphic, “but I realize that it is a sentiment that is shared all over the world.”

“As most people on the West Coast end up doing,” Christopher has been riding bikes his whole life, depending on them initially for freedom from his very rural home on Vancouver Island as a teenager. After moving to Vancouver cycling “became a passion beyond transportation, this city kind of spurs you on to wanting to cycle more, especially all the infrastructure.” Competing in Alley Cat races, getting into track riding, and working his way through school at a local bike shop, have all immersed him in the Vancouver urban bike culture – from which he draws his inspirations.

It was Christopher’s interest in communications; specifically how people relate to and interact with each other that led him to pursue a degree in English. Then, through his fashion program at Kwantlen College, Christopher realized how much people communicate via clothing, “and so I really wanted to take the influences all around me and build my own brand off of that.” Using the urban cycling culture as a platform – “if you look at Supreme or Sur, or any of the big street wear brands, they have always been built on something, either immigrant culture, or skateboard culture, or something along those lines,” he began applying his own aesthetic and influences from his community, film, music and popular culture to his designs. “It’s fun because I can draw from all of my passions and from the things that influence me, and I have a place to put it out now.”


The combination of his appreciation for high fashion and love of cycling helped Christopher define his goal “to make clothing that cyclist will immediately appreciate and that people who are just interested in fashion and clothing design will also be interested in.” Drawing on his experience and appreciation of the fashion industry, he wants “to take the motifs and aesthetics that I like from that end of things and apply it going the other way, into cycling clothing.” This is opposed to what he has experienced thus far, “I feel that a lot of cycling gear is built on the technical aspect and the aesthetic comes after.”

Sports wear is a huge trend in fashion right now; Adidas is making a comeback, Puma has hired Rihanna as their Creative Director, and big name designers like Christopher Kane are making dresses out of neoprene; a fabric that was solely designed for the technical clothing industry. “So,” Christopher says of Ouroboros, “if there is any time to launch this vision, that I’ve had for a while, it’s now when the fashion and technical aspects are meeting.”

“Really with Ouroboros there’s a high level of design to everything.” Christopher explains that the WE KILL BIKE THIEVES graphic is more than just words, “the amount of time I spent working on the tracking and kerning just to have it look how I wanted it to was huge. We could have just done a Comic Sans font or something, but I wanted to use reflective inks, I thought that was really interesting.” In addition, he is focused on quality control and sourcing suppliers domestically. ”The majority of Ouroboros’ production is done in Vancouver, with all their printing done locally and all of their cycling caps cut and sewn in Richmond. “Everything I want to create has to be at a certain level, I want it to be quality and I want it to be produced as close to home as possible.”