BUDICCA

BOUDICCA [brian & zowei] by Olimpia Dior

BOUDICCA.- Preliminary Studies


This interview was made for the autumn issue of milkshake CHOCOLATE; publication date September 22st. Unfortunately some technical problems kept us from publishing on time, and for this reason some of the information in these pages might be dated, like the fact that noovo festival has already taken place (November 1-4) or the fact that their collection SS:08 Preliminary Studies has been released and it's not "news" as it was intended when we did this questionaire.In any case I couldn't leave this interview out because A: it's an honour to have them in this magazine and B: because Boudicca belongs to the group of designers that are helping the fashion world to push forward, and it's mandatory to fend for ideas like theirs.
Interview by Patricia YagüePictures © Boudicca

1.- Hello Zowie and Brian. What are you working on right now? We are somewhere in the middle of many things. We have come from a Preliminary Study for Spring Summer 2008 and face the finality of that collection. We are also in discussion for Couture 02. We are now an invited member to Couture, which began last year and so our thoughts are always pushing towards the art of dress and how that can manifest itself in either a presentation or a collection.

2.- The Victoria & Albert, one of the most important Museums in terms of fashion support, featured your work in the event Fashion in Motion in November 2003, the same year that American Express offered to sponsor your collections. What did it mean to you when all of a sudden big institutions started to pay attention to your work?Susanne Lussier was at the V & A at the time and it felt more supportive and encouraging of creativity. Also Katherine Whitton was at American Express at the time and she too felt like a great person who was looking for ways to make creative relationships between commercial and independent companies; relationships that are essential for all history of ideas to survive, in fact.I think both relationships had their great times and led to new relationships and opened our eyes of how further relationships / collaborations can work. You learn much from these partnerships that are essential in moving forward both in business and in forming ideas.
The V & A have most recently asked us to be the designer who creates their Christmas tree for 2007.

3.- Back in 2001, the G8 at Genoa involved a big crowd of people fighting against the advance of corporate globalization. In an interview you did for Hint magazine I discovered you were in that crowd; do you think that things are really changing for good now that movies like China Blue or An Inconvenient True are being supportive in mass? Did you have any kind of personal issue when a big company as Amex got in contact with you to work with?Genoa is something we both feel deeply proud of. It was an exhilaration to understand the strength you have as individuals to fight for your beliefs. To fight for something that at the time most people had no understanding of. In fact it is great to see at last after many, many years that people are beginning to take on board some of the issues that were being raised. If you go back as far as 1995 to Virdana Shiva and Anthony Geddens , George Sorros, Polly Toynbee , George Monbiot to name a few, you will find they all wrote a series of essays that encompassed the issues that need to be raised as we moved forward into our global environment. These issues are mostly still around and if we all just learned to listen more to those around us who are wise... It is key if we are to benefit from the greatness of our world.
Anti globalization is not what we protested for though, it was anti banality. We need support as all art has over the ages, from those who can afford to. It is important to recognize that the wealth has the power to do everything, and so to develop relationships with these people is key. To possibly change the way they think even should not be forgotten moving forward.


4.- Your creative world is somewhat inspired by old things, starting with the origins of your own label's name. Fashion Prints; Boudicca Animate series, is a collection of etching prints in collaboration with artist Graham Dolphin. Etching is one of the most antiques techniques of printmaking, back to the Middle Ages, and you created with it a contemporary view on XIX century fashion plates; How did this project come to live? A guy called Shaun Castle who had originally come to talk to us about Wode, our soon to be released fragrance, represented Graham at the time. And with most intriguing people, he wandered in his conversation and thoughts and finally asked if Graham could base a project on one of our collections, one of our designs. He showed us Grahams’ work and we loved it; the obsession, and the palimpsest quality in ways that had been words and processes that run across and through our work often.And so to work. We met with Graham a few times and he studied our workings and created a small collection of ideas. These were then shown at David Risely’s gallery in Vyner Street. And crossed various national exhibitions.

5.- Being film buffs as you are, is there any movie you wished you'd done the costumes for? is there any costume designer that needs to be mentioned?Moidele Bickel is the costume designer for La Reine Margot which has to be an impressive credit to your CV. La Reine Margot has a sense of the complete when you watch it that not only allows an emotional response to the story but there is no sense of even watching a film, there is no dysfunction or edges that remind you where you are. For a moment you are submerged into time.
The colour and the sense of texture and powder, the dry of the stone, the cold of the leather, they all intertwine. This is an impressive language of costume that inspires us to want to create our own film.

6.- The sets in your shows are as important as the clothing you feature. The one for your SS:00 collection, Plans for A Woman, really disturbed me, in a good sense. Could you tell me something about it? The story behind the sets and the inspirations?The obsession of someone building a woman, someone they adore passionately and yet that sense of inspection as we design every season, can have a horrific feel. In fact the industry of fashion has that constantly if you want to feel or see that. On the other hand in a more storyteller romance of a novel we have discovered a story about a man obsessed with a woman that he wanted to have built for him. {We believe he was the artist Oscar Kokoshka in fact) He would send all the measurements he could gather; how many eyelashes, how many freckles on her back etc etc and then these would be sent off to the puppeteer maker in Czechoslovakia perhaps. . The finality. Well she was distorted. Unbeautiful. A set of conditions that gave birth to something lacking beauty. It is the uncertain, the unknown, the fragile soul, that holds a beauty together in fact. Instructions and detail alone did not work.
Philip Pullman wrote a great book story that has a similar feel “Clockwork” and there is a wonderful scene in Fellini’s Casanova where Donald Sutherland lays his love to sleep – she is an automata doll and the woman he wants to love the most.


7.- An Artificial Paradise is a very special site where you can enjoy not only your SS:07 collection but also a series of photographs divided in three "books", Elegance, Science, and Violence!, and accompanied by music. What's behind each of these books? What each of these books represent?Elegance – is a silhouette, a moment of linear understanding that if you take that time to flick through you will be fed by what covers our wall for inspiration of silhouette and design.It is important to understand that a word is created from all influences and that these come in many different forms and guise and that the books give a small feeling of division and focus.
So then we have Science – which shows the world of pattern for the future, the skins that you can buy online and the world of a new obsession, a new elsewhere you can become another, on another, live a second life. This has not really fully defined itself on line as yet and there is already drop out from the world Second Life BUT timing is for genius and this is just bad timing. Wait and see these three dimensional worlds will return and they will become our future.There was a time when we saw that Internet shopping was not to survive and yet now .. Well we all experience the modernity of it and so … this will be our new world and we would love to make a Boudicca world, worlds for you to step into, a virtual experience, a dream, a new place….. that is another interview to explain fully some time…..
Finally Violence – a word that belongs within our vocabulary but this talks of the notion of violence in a more poetic way / need, looking at Jean Genet ‘s obsession with violence and how his words gave a beauty. In the same way we can see the beauty in darkness through a lot of our work. The fragility of violence and how that can shape us daily in a poetic way rather than a dark tilted way. AND that is ok.


8.- In 2004 you showed your FW:05 collection in NY after years showing in London. NYFW is not known for being very supportive to off-the-box and independent talents for some reason, or at least that's the impression I get. How has it been all these years showing in NYFW? Have you found support among the press? Among the public? Why did you decide to take this step in your careers? We showed for three seasons in NY: AW:05, SS:06, AW:06. We found great support in New York, starting with family, Sarah Broach is key and then onwards to Patti Wilson, who is a deep inspiration, Yana, Tommy Saleh, Michael Gordon and Kim Smith of Bumble and Bumble all played a huge part in our story, our scene of New York. Dr. Valerie Steele and her team, Kim Hastreiter, Sally Singer, Julie Gilhart of Barney’s the list tumbles forth.And then the history of creatives in New York deeply inspired us – Marcel Duchamp, Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Rauschenburg although he is not really seen as a NewYorker I do not feel. But anyways there is so much great art and writing, people who wander those street, Alfred Stieglitz recorded them for us all to still see and so on.
We seem to sit on the edge of the industry and try not to feel the negatives of the fashion system. It happens in London too but it is not about the cities themselves, but about money and order. And so I guess if you can remain swimming and stubbornly travel further towards your ideals then you learn to ignore the unsupportive and draw towards you those that find your design and ideas important to them. There is always support for ideas in the end. Ideas are what people feed upon!


9.- This year Boudicca was invited to attend the 1st Festival International of Fashion and Photography noovo in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. How was the experience? Any anecdote to tell?We have not been there yet so we may come back to you on that one! Diane Pernet though is the lady who invited us and Diane ...Well, Diane is just a stella lady. She is opinionated and strong and needs to just be worshipped in many ways. You should connect to her sites and type pads and all that she talks online.
http://www.ashadedviewonfashion.com/http://iqons.com/diane+pernet

10.- What are you reading these days? The Meaning of the 21st Century by James MartinBlack Swan by Nassim Nicholas TalebA Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov