Claus Bellinger: Inspired Success in Carbon Fiber Designs

By JoAnne Sommers

Some people find their inspiration in long walks on the beach or hiking in the mountains. Others are fired by the adrenaline rush of downhill skiing or ocean kayaking. Ask Claus Bellinger what gets his motor running and he’ll answer, “all of the above.”

The 38-year-old designer behind the Blac line from Danish eyewear company BELLINGER A/S, is truly a man of many parts.

“My influences include art and architecture, the natural world and extreme sports,” he says. “One of my greatest passions is a love of design, colour and shape. I love (Danish furniture and interior designer) Verner Panton's designs from the 1960s but anything and everything can inspire new ideas.”

Claus Bellinger

While he loved art and design as a child, neither Bellinger nor his wife Marlene with whom he founded BELLINGER A/S in 2003, were trained as designers. “I was working in marketing and sales when we decided to start the company,” he recalls. “Many people in this business have a design education but I think we have an advantage because the lack of formal training allows us to think outside the box and challenge conventional thinking.”

That approach has led BELLINGER A/S to a number of innovations. In 2004 it became the first eyewear company to put details on acetate temples and later it was among the first to use detailed laser cutting on temples.

Its most recent innovation is the Blac eyewear line, which features the world’s first adjustable carbon fiber frame. Blac was inspired by the McLaren MP4-1, the first Formula One racecar to use a carbon fiber-composite chassis. This giant leap forward in strength and solidity revolutionized racing car design.

Intrigued by the possibility of using carbon fiber in eyewear frames, Bellinger assembled a team comprised of designers, technical engineers and inventors. Their vision: an innovative new eyewear brand that was cool, sporty and masculine.

“We wanted to do something completely different,” Bellinger says. “Our customers expect innovation from us and we want to inspire them. That puts pressure on us and we enjoy the challenge.”

Adapting carbon fiber for use in eyeglass frames proved to be a worthy challenge for the Bellinger team. The material is popular with the aerospace, defence, auto and sporting goods industries, where it is prized for its light weight, high tensile strength and resistance to high temperature levels. Increasingly, carbon fiber is also finding its way into pens, watches and other fashion accessories. But several eyewear companies had previously tried to use carbon fiber and failed.

Bellinger, however, persisted, even though the company found the material expensive and hard to work with. “From a production standpoint, Blac has been a headache,” Bellinger admits. “That’s partly because this is a new material and we had to create our own machinery to use it. But although the process was very difficult it was worth the effort because we learned so much along the way.”

Despite its challenges, carbon fiber offers many advantages, Bellinger adds. “It’s great to use and warm to the touch. The woven carbon fiber creates a unique texture and you can see the strands of the fabric itself. It’s also three to four times lighter than titanium and extremely strong.

The worlds first adjustable carbon fiber frame — Blac — was presented at MIDO in Milan in 2008. Each frame, composed of carbon fiber and fiberglass and made by hand in Denmark, was a revolution in the eyewear business. The sub line, Blac Titanium, debuted at Silmo 2009; it features sleek beta titanium fronts and carbon fibre and fibreglass temples with titanium strengthening and is available in 10 different shapes and five colours.

The total Blac collection consists of 31 shapes in five to eight colours. The word colour, however, is used advisedly, says Bellinger. “We do not use lacquer on any of our frames. Carbon fibers are by nature black and they are not coloured in any way. The fiberglass is naturally silver and this allows us to colour it before we make the frame.”

All frames are produced at the company’s Aarhus factory in central Denmark, where many of the parts are hand made and hand polished.

Richard Stortini, the owner of Montreal-based Prisme Optical Group, began distributing Blac in Canada last August. He pays the collection the ultimate compliment of wearing a pair of Blac frames himself.

“It’s a beautiful line and Blac is a unique product,” he says. “There’s really nothing like it on the market. We’ve had a great response to it from retailers across the country.”

Blac frames are now available in major cities across Canada.

The look, which Stortini describes as “sporty yet classic; non-traditional but not outrageous,” appeals to a broad cross-section of men aged 20 to 60 — everyone from surfer dudes and computer geeks to traditionally conservative businessmen.