Boadicea the Victorious
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The citrus trio detonates immediately—mandarin's candied sweetness colliding with bergamot's Earl Grey sharpness whilst orange blossom blurs the boundary between fruit and flower. Coriander adds a soapy, almost metallic brightness that pushes the whole opening into synthetic territory, like biting into a particularly convincing citrus-scented sweet. It's unrelenting in its freshness, almost aggressively cheerful.
The florals arrive as a compressed, sweet mass where individual voices struggle to distinguish themselves—geranium's minty facets merge with lily of the valley's piercing lactonic sweetness, whilst jasmine and rose add generic 'floralcy' rather than character. The sweetness intensifies here, taking on an almost syrupy quality that sits somewhere between pleasant and cloying. Everything remains bright and close to the skin, intimate rather than projecting.
Tonka and benzoin create a soft, vanilla-tinged warmth that finally tempers some of that relentless sweetness, though never fully subdues it. The amber adds a skin-like quality whilst cedar provides the barest whisper of woodiness, more concept than presence. What remains is a sweet, clean musk—polite, inoffensive, the olfactory equivalent of a pastel watercolour that's been left in the sun.
Passionate announces itself with the full-throttle brightness of citrus pressed to breaking point—bergamot and mandarin collide with orange blossom in a way that blurs the line between zest and petals, creating that peculiar sweetness that hovers just above bitter. Michel Almairac has built something deliberately synthetic here, a confection that doesn't apologise for its 1980s heritage. The coriander adds a soapy, aldehydic shimmer that feels almost deliberately retro, like walking past a department store perfume counter in an era when 'fresh' meant louder, brasher, unapologetically chemical.
As the heart emerges, the florals arrive in a compressed bouquet—geranium's minty greenness jostling against lily of the valley's piercing sweetness, rose and jasmine filling gaps rather than singing solos. It's the olfactory equivalent of a pastel power suit: feminine signifiers rendered in bold strokes. The sweetness throughout is relentless, almost syrupy, with that 88% sweet accord never letting you forget its presence. This isn't naturalistic florals-and-citrus; it's an amplified, idealised version, like turning up the saturation until the colours nearly vibrate.
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4.3/5 (213)