‘B O U D I C C A will not be showing during Paris Couture this season. Well not as such.’ So was the loaded opening line of a very cryptic email we received from Boudicca this week. The email went on to explain, albeit obscurely, that there will be no physical couture collection from Boudicca this year, but instead an online, new media art project that will attempt to challenge and promote discussion on ideas of ‘couture.’ Tempted by the possibilities tucked away in this mysterious message, we just had to know more. Bouddica offered up some interesting answers to our questions in that inimitable Boudicca style…

Dazed Digital: What exactly will the 'website exchange and essay' entail?
Boudicca: During the dates of couture, a select few will be invited on to a new website. This invitation will come as a password found in a conclusion to an essay, a short piece of writing.  (see the essay they most recently wrote for the A/W08 issue of AnOther magazine on the next page)
The site will present an initial look at ideas around COUTURE that have found a certain freedom by not having to be made into the finest fabrics and construction that BOUDICCA are known for. This is a freedom that allowed us to create an image, build a moment of beauty that does not have to walk down a catwalk to exist and feel impact.
This is still a work in progress, so its difficult to totally clarify.

DD: Why has Boudicca  chosen to create this new media art project instead of showing a physical collection?
B: To remain alive in ideas, within your own experiences, in an auto didactic sense, within an unknown, is crucial to us all and available to us all. Why not explore this?

DD: Will Boudicca still produce a full couture collection? How does Boudicca propose to manifest a couture collection online?
B: Ideas and expression, are limitless unless we choose to limit it.  A collection is as it states, a collective of thoughts that may or may not have been finished or concluded.  Some of these ideas may go further to a state of conclusion as we best understand, some not. The idea of capturing an unintentional beauty for a moment, to struggle to find that, is what we are interested in within the realm of the ideal of Couture (ideal).

DD: Boudicca would like to 'build dialogue with a few select people,' yet the internet by and large democratizes social/cultural dialogue. Who is Boudicca hoping to build dialogue with in this online project?
B: There have been many moments in the history of the idea, particularly quoting the last century when smaller groups of people who felt open and comfortable with each other, spent time in discussion, maybe in silence and maybe in contemplation, to allow ideas and dialogue to feel free to possibly fail, enable new horizons of thought.
The Bloomsbury group, ‘their’ time in Tangiers; the residential hotels such as the legacy of the Chelsea Hotel all show moments of this, and the tradition of the Salons in Paris for example.
And yes the internet by and large democratizes social /cultural dialogue but it does not have to. Even on Facebook you can create private rooms, as this is a conduit for conversation that surely you choose to test and develop with whoever you like. 
Conclusively and firmly though we state, we have no clear idea of how this will manifest itself as it’s a start of a dialogue and could go many ways .  We are open to failure, open to complaint and negative debate. It is an idea that in itself can be criticized and that is all that is important. 
Difference is confusing and unsettling but if we stay still we become stagnant and that is what we wish to avoid.