subscribe to style file blog via RSSlike wode: boudicca launches visible perfume, spring clothes
July 7, 2008 7:40 pm
A white cotton shift stands on a dummy, looking quite untouchably immaculate. A woman approaches, picks up a can, shakes it, and proceeds to spray the whole thing cobalt. What are we witnessing? Not an act of vandalism or graffiti art, but a designer invoking the ancient powers of a great British warrior queen. Or, to put it a bit more simply, it’s Zowie Broach, launching Boudicca’s so-called “art perfume,” Wode. The trick is that the product sprays on blue but then evaporates, leaving the scent but no color residue. The high-tech potion contains both woad, the blue vegetable pigment purportedly used by Celts as war paint, and hemlock, the poison with which Queen Boudicca legendarily killed herself rather than be captured by the occupying Romans. Boudicca was also showing its Spring collection, by the way. Dedicated to the idea of “Visible and Invisible,” it’s a sophisticated play on black and white transparencies and opacities, in which half a dress might be solid and the other sheer. Getting really practical about it, Broach and her partner, Brian Kirkby, are providing a stand-alone line of curvaceous, slightly “Butterfield 8″ georgette and lace slips to go under everything. They can be bought with a dress—or individually. Given the way things are going, economy-wise, and glimpse-of-Chantilly-petticoat-wise, that could turn out to be one of the smartest buys from the collection.
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