Boadicea the Victorious is one of those perfume houses that I’ve managed to ignore for a while. It happens to be an easy line to ignore, because it has such limited availability; moreover, something about Boadicea has always irritated me. Maybe it’s the cumbersomely large range of scents (does anyone really need to start a new line with forty-plus fragrances?), the strenuous emphasis on “luxury” and “heritage,” or the single-adjective fragrance names that are hard to distinguish from one another as well as difficult to read on Boadicea’s small, black-on-black labels.

When I finally stopped by Henri Bendel to try a few Boadicea the Victorious fragrances, I was joined by a sales associate who turned out to be well versed in the line. After I had picked up a few bottles, spritzed a few paper blotters, and decided that neither Romantic, nor Inspiring, nor Delicate (which seems like a knock-off of Penhaligon’s Bluebell) were making any strong impression on me, the sales associate suggested that I try Exotic. Fragrances with the word “exotic” in their descriptive text rarely appeal to me, and I would not describe myself as “exotic” by any means, but I took the newly sprayed blotter from her and inhaled. Then I tested Exotic on my wrist, and I ended up savoring it for the rest of the afternoon; and when I later got my hands on a sample vial of Exotic, I enjoyed it all over again…

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