UK niche line Boadicea the Victorious has launched the Oud Collection, eight new fragrances exclusive to Harrods:
At the heart of this new collection is the rare and beautiful ingredient Oud, the aromatic resinous heartwood from the evergreen Aquilaria trees native to southeast Asia. This rich luxurious resin is valued in many cultures for its distinctive and unique fragrance.
The Oud Collection fragrances are:
Ceremonious ~ “Heavy with wet fruit, nectar and honey, Ceremonious blends agarwood with grassy, balsamic notes to create this divine scent. Dedicated to the beauty of narcissus and Oud…” With notes of grass, narcissus, cassis, oud, tonka and guaiacwood.
Courageous ~ “Combining a rich fruity-peachy heart with ginger and a long-lasting base of Oud, musk and sandalwood…”; additional notes include bergamot, and mandarin.
Elaborate ~ “…an uncompromising and dominant perfume. Combining an earthy, sexy blend of Oud, leather and animal notes…”; additional notes include violet, labdanum, leather, musk and civet.
Enchanting ~ “…an intriguing and richly spiced blend of camphoracious notes against a heart of pepper, Oud and patchouli”; additional notes include rosemary, fir, ambergris and musk.
Ethereal ~ “Probably the most luxurious fragrance in the world. This extraordinarily rare perfume combines the intoxicatingly powerful scent of agarwood with precious ambergris.” With notes of lemon, rose, jasmine, nutmeg, oud, guaiacwood and ambergris.
Enticing ~ “…a youthful, deliciously attractive fragrance that balances delicately between the sweet and the balsamic. Seductively close to chocolate…” Featuring notes of linalyl acetate, costus, lily, rose, oud, ambergris, musk and frankincense.
Exquisite ~ “A modern fragrance with a fruity twist, Exquisite sets a white floral heart of lily and jasmine against a rich woody background. Reminiscent of sunshine on a heady May afternoon…”; additional notes include citrus, rose, oud, patchouli and vanilla.
Pioneer ~ “A truly masculine scent, Pioneer is constructed around a rich leather note and combines bergamot, galbanum and the balsamic richness of labdanum leaving a fabulous soft Oud dry down.” The notes feature bergamot, galbanum, oud, cistus, labdanum and cedarwood.
The Boadicea the Victorious Oud Collection fragrances are £225 for 100 ml Eau de Parfum, with the exception of Ethereal, which is £450 for 100 ml Eau de Parfum. (via harrods)
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These sound very nice – I’m particularly attracted to the note lists for Ceremonious and Exquisite – and the bottle is lovely. But that’s approximately $375 US per bottle… more expensive than Amouage! So I regretfully cross Boadicea the Victorious (cool historic name, by the way) off my list. Sigh.
They’re very spendy! And they’ve launched something like 30 perfumes since September, which is sort of incredible. Haven’t smelled them though.
They are very spendy indeed. I contacted Boadicea the Victorious through his website and was promised some samples as you can only purchase the fragrances through Harrods. He promised to send some right away, well he never did. I cannot justify spending that kind of $$$$ on something i may not like. Too bad that samples are not easily available.
What a shame!
I contacted Boadicea again and received an email that his line will be available at Luckyscent in about 3 weeks. Wonderful, we will get to try some samples i hope
Ah, thanks for the news!
Very nice bottle, but whoa Nelly that’s pricey!
Yep.
This makes me desperate to try Elaborate (oud, civet, musk, and violet??? cool!), but at those prices, all I’ll probably ever buy is a sample, surely.
At least you’re not after Ethereal, the REALLY expensive one!
And that was the only one I was interested in sniffing….I will just forget about this line…..oud isn’t really my thing anyway. But they do seem to be interesting!
Me too but at that price even a sample will cost too much!
in love with the bottles – so many scents to choose from – makes my head spin …anyone know if they plan to distribute in the USA at all?
I think so, but don’t know when.
Hm, maybe someone will sell me a bottle when it’s empty…
Or we could do a timeshare, by the month. Dibs on October!
LOL! I’m happy with any of the dreary months of November, February or March.
Or maybe they’d sell us an empty one…
Yes, their display section at Harrods is so overwhelming! The SA tried to lead me through a sniffinh expedition of each and every one! I couldn’t face it. It’s different with Annick Goutal and Jo malone, or Guerlain – as I have a sense which ones I am interested and want to try. So I can be selective. But the Boudicea ones are so numerous and simialr sounding, it’s hard to know where to start! I did enjoy a few though – cannot remember which ones they were! Beautiful Celtic designs on bottles, and I am a fan of Boudicea – or Boudicca, as she is often referred to. Prices are, gulp, perhaps a tad too ambitious for my tastes. Serge doesn’t have the cheek to charge those amounts! Even Mr Ford has restrained himself from such sky-high sums!
As I said, I haven’t sniffed a single one, but 30+ in less than a year is a deterrent…I didn’t even want to smell the 12 Tom Ford Private Blends when they launched.
30+ in a year is daunting at any price level but at this, it’s just scary. As good as they sound….I won’t seek them out. Even 2 or 3 you could sniff and consider…maybe look for a decant…but 30?
the salivating was in full swing…dribble?…by the second bottle description but holy cow! 370-375 USD ….yeah, you know I went to the currency converter immediately….for 100ml ? They can bite me right on the fleshy part of my Boadicea! these people have gotten just a little too full of themselves….Boadicea is rolling in her grave er, make that: funeral pyre right now….
You know, she’d never pay such an outrageous sum herself. Likely just swoop in and behead the SA, then make off with whatever she could carry.
well, she was a woman of action….but don’t give me any ideas.
They’re obviously after a certain market, and they seem to be doing well so I suppose it’s working! What else can I say…
That could be a car payment.
For me, two car payments (I’m cheap about cars too, LOL)
Nope. Too much, too many, too soon and too unknown.
I finally caved & tried the TF Private Blends after a couple years, and will probably cave on these eventually too.
It’s funny because just this morning I was moaning and carrying on about the price of a bottle of PotL Luctor et Emergo EdP…..daughter wants some, so that’s my next split….now the price seems a bit more reasonable! You know I think the perfume industry has an insidious plan to de-sensitize us to outrageous prices…
Ugh…I can sympathize. I was perfectly content with a decant of that (the little that was left of my sample bit the dust on my roommate’s desk. Whoops) up until I saw the scarf and the interesting-looking bottle. Now I’m seriously jonesing for a whole bottle while my student loans are bellowing in my other ear. *sigh* Someday perhaps…
Rachel…on your roomates desk? well, at least the room smelled good, right? let me know if your student loans will allow you to join the split….I listed it with contact info at scentsplits.
Well, it’s working to some extent…I used to think $100 was expensive.
I hear ya. The very first bottle of niche I bought was 100ml of Drole de Rose ….with the exchange rate it was about $115 ….I think my palms were sweating while I placed the order! I thought ohmigosh, I’m buying the most expensive, extravagent bottle of perfume ever!
hahahahha! yeah, I got over that bit of nervousness!
I’m suspicious of any company that puts out eight fragrances at the same time. And they don’t have dolls on top.
LOL…no, no dolls!
I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t like the bottle. For the price, it shouldn’t look like a flask sold at some hippie head shop. (Pardon the snark.)
LOL! No, I don’t adore it either, although I don’t *dislike* it.
Ack. So, I went to their website just out of curiosity… you’d think at these prices, they could afford to hire someone to proofread their website! (My rates are reasonable, if they have trouble finding someone.
)
…and then something about VioletNoir’s comment jogged my memory about this line. I see we had the same complaint last fall.
I admit I did not look over the website since it launched…will have to take a peek.
i’ll bet anyone ten dollars that their raw materials cost for the juice is less than ten dollars.
Yes, but you also get the pretty, pretty bottle. Just think of all the prettiness that will be housed in the dark cabinet you put it in!
Haha, but I agree–the price could be far more reasonable, and I think the names make it really hard to remember which scent is more appealing to you. I love the sound of Exquisite, but in a day I’ll forget and wonder if it’s Enchanting that I love? Or maybe Elaborate? Ethereal? Enticing?
With 30 fragrances in a year I can imagine the scene at one of their intensive formulation sessions: “hey, grab that biggest pot over there…so what’ve we got on the perfumery shelf? yeah, toss that in here….that smell ok? cool, pour this in some bottles…one down 29 to go! what else is on the shelf?…..” and so on. I just can’t imagine that they are creating with the meticulous care that say, Andy Tauer creates with.
Quite possible, although that’s probably true of many lines.
You know, I have some samples of the “earlier” ones (30 since September…ha!), and I was not that impressed. They all smelled a bit the same and were rather linear, as English fragrances can be.
Hugs!
Thanks R…haven’t smelled a single one. Hugs to you!
Last month I was in London for a couple of days and was strolling around in Selfridges when I was stopped by a Boadicea sa. They were presenting their fragrance collection and Michael Boadi was there too. He made me try two of their perfumes on skin, Delicate and , if I remember correctly, Warrior. They weren’t bad, but I was put off by the fact that there were too many, at the same time, as if they had sprung up during the night. I didn’t like the names (too didactic, I think), I found the bottles cheap-looking and thought that Boadi’s claim that his fragrances were all 100% natural “because chemicals are fake” was a tad annoying.
Funny, since a lot of natural scents are known allergens.
Did he say that? That is silly — you can look right at the notes and see that they’re using synthetics.
Ha!
Yes, he said that. In fact, my impression was not a good one and my interest in the line fell immediately. Our brief chat and the huge number of fragrances made me suspicious.
If they were 100% natural, they’d probably cost even more than they already do…plus they’d be maybe the only company on earth still using AND admitting to using animal-derived products.
These will be coming to Luckyscent in the next couple of months. I’ve smelled about 6 of them. They were nice, but I had no idea how expensive they were. I will probably just buy one – my favorite was Enchanting.
I think there are different packaging options, and don’t know — perhaps this “oud collection” costs more than the rest of the line?
I just read in the newspaper that Michelle Obama bought a bottle of one of these when she was in London. The paper didn’t qualify as to which one, they made it seem like it was stand alone fragrance, so I have no idea which scent she choose.
Sorry, I see it was already mentioned in an earlier post! She has god perfume taste, we can all say that
Yep, Noble!
Ceremonious sounds lovely–narcissus is heaven–but I can’t even wrap my head around those prices. And, maybe it’s just me, but Ethereal didn’t sound very appealing anyway. =P
I like narcissus too. Not sure about narcissus + oud, but do like narcissus.
This calls to mind those restaurants where there are 500 dishes on the menu — or, worse, 5 different cuisines (Indian! Thai! Sushi! Pizza! Nuevo Latino!). You just know that they can’t do all of them well. That said, I’d give Elaborate a sniff if I happened to chance upon a bottle!
LOL…good point.
Would you invite Boadicea to a dinner party?
I have to write an essay on which 4 women, alive or dead, I would have to have a dinner party with. I want to say people like Liza Minnelli, but I don’t think that will get me into college (this is a women’s college, that’s why it asks for 4 *women* btw)
There’s a famous 1982 play by Caryl Churchill entitled ‘Top Girls’, in which a woman invites several ‘historical’ women to dinner. It’s brilliant; you might want to look it up.
And I would definitely want to invite Boadicea, as well Golda Meir, for instance.
oh, thank you
I will look it up
Commenting on topic, if they go to Luckyscent, I’d like to get samples of Elaborate and Enchanting
I was in London earlier this month. . .the SA at Selfridges, who wisely, pointed me to Amouage’s Lyric Woman, encouraged me to try Boadicea’s Majestic as well. It was bracingly, bitterly green, but grew on me. Through my week, I went by Harrods, spritzed it again. . .then finally caved and went back to Selfridges to purchase 50mL.
Majestic is green grass with narcissus atop a guiac base. Heaven. Weird heaven, but wonderful.
The line is very pricey, but there is nothing like this in my collection. . .I agree with the commenter that said the line is a bit linear, but I kept going back to it, and knew I couldn’t purchase it at home, so took the plunge. Certainly a line to try, but I did not find another that intrigued me as much as this one.
Thanks…glad a fan showed up!
Ok, I am Sold! Where do i buy these babies at???
They Sound Utterly SCRUMPTIOUS! All of them! 
Harrods!
LOL!
I meant in the U.S. 
I looked into their website so i think i can order them directly!
Oh duh, sorry! See the comments above…looks like they’re coming to Luckyscent. Don’t know which scents though!