Top Notes 
Saffron
Cinnamon
Heart Notes 
Amber
Magnolia
Frankincense
Vimzorkap
Base Notes 
Kashmiri musk
Vanilla
NicheOnly
116 Reviews
NicheOnly
2
The perfect brand summary
Today, the Boadicea coverage comes to an end. After spending €300 on 34 samples towards the end of August, I was coming into the brand with high expectations as I was always including Boadicea alongside other premium brands like Clive Christian, Royal Crown and Roja Parfums as being among the niche brands who are making "top-of-the-market product". Starting today, you will never see me refer to Boadicea in that group ever again. Dragon isn't the main reason for this choice, but as a product, Dragon perfectly summarizes my experience so far across those 34 samples.
Dragon opens sweet-spicy with prominent cherry-like quality. I am instantly thinking of saffron and on the first wear, I actually thought there were rose-like nuances here and it appears others get that too, based on the comparisons to Nishane's superstar release Nefs, but there's actually no rose here at all (and I reapplied it just to be certain). The initial smell is inspired by scents like Gritti's Duchessa which is the clear market-leader in this genre, but puzzlingly, Boadicea already has a fragrance in this genre that aims to compete with Duchessa: that fragrance is Bodacious and unlike Dragon, it's executed relatively well with the cherry being a core of the scent's profile.
The dry-down takes somewhat of a turn, more-so in quality than profile. Dragon develops some mild oriental nuances to it, smelling of light cinnamon & amberwood alongside the saffron. This profile is clearly more in the direction of Initio's hero franchise Side Effect, especially in the base where it has that rubbery smell that most Side Effect type scents feature, incl. recent releases such as Sospiro's Il Padrino, Pana Dora's Onyx Black, Memo Paris' Abu Dhabi and many others. The small changes never pan out to anything relevant in this genre as the execution of cinnamon & saffron is almost always subpar. People are voting for accords like floral & creamy, but to my nose, those aspects are nowhere to be found. It might have some creaminess on-skin, but the oriental accord completely overshadows it.
There's so much negative to say about both Dragon and Boadicea that I'm not entirely sure what direction I want to take the end of this review. I intentionally kept Dragon as the last fragrance as the positive coverage both on social media and on Parfumo made me think this product would be a competitor to Clive Christian's XXI: Art Deco - Blonde Amber. Boy, was I wrong - Dragon instead serves as one of Boadicea's most embarrassing lowlights across their entire catalogue. An imitation of a fragrance for which the brand already has an imitation for, with the base DNA being an imitation for what could very well be fragcom's most overrated fragrance profile. Dragon obviously has other shortfalls too, incl. the €1,150/100ml retail price tag and relative to the profile, a moderate performance.
To close with, my experience with Boadicea as a brand in the past 3 weeks has been nothing short of abysmal. I entered the brand, expecting them to create superior versions of existing profiles in the market. A big reason why I was expecting that is because that's what I was led to believe Boadicea's whole gig was: they take a profile and improve upon it so they can sell it for big bucks. Across the 34 fragrances that I smelled, the only scent that outclassed the original was Hanuman (FWIW: Knight of Love could be another one as I haven't smelled the inspiration). One of the scents in the Sapphires Collection was good-to-great (Tobacco Sapphire), another one of the premium-priced products was good-to-great (Nemer), and a couple scents in the Original Collection were good (Energizer, Jubilee); so around 6-8 fragrances were between a 7.5 and an 8.5 in my ratings.
However, given that more than 2/3 of the catalogue has some type of an inspiration behind it, it sure is a harsh reality for both fans of Boadicea and those interested in the brand that nearly not a single fragrance in their catalogue significantly improves upon the original's concept. Performance wise the products were largely light and looking at the whole catalogue from a value perspective, there's nothing positive to say about the brand, given the average retail price for a product is north of €600/100ml. For that money, you can buy every Clive Christian product, approx. 90% of Royal Crown's products, and approx. 80-85% of Roja's products. Boadicea never offered me even one experience that was anywhere near the peaks of these 3 brands and that makes me appreciate these brands even more as it has given me a different type of appreciation for the type of product that I'm willing to spend my money on.
Dragon opens sweet-spicy with prominent cherry-like quality. I am instantly thinking of saffron and on the first wear, I actually thought there were rose-like nuances here and it appears others get that too, based on the comparisons to Nishane's superstar release Nefs, but there's actually no rose here at all (and I reapplied it just to be certain). The initial smell is inspired by scents like Gritti's Duchessa which is the clear market-leader in this genre, but puzzlingly, Boadicea already has a fragrance in this genre that aims to compete with Duchessa: that fragrance is Bodacious and unlike Dragon, it's executed relatively well with the cherry being a core of the scent's profile.
The dry-down takes somewhat of a turn, more-so in quality than profile. Dragon develops some mild oriental nuances to it, smelling of light cinnamon & amberwood alongside the saffron. This profile is clearly more in the direction of Initio's hero franchise Side Effect, especially in the base where it has that rubbery smell that most Side Effect type scents feature, incl. recent releases such as Sospiro's Il Padrino, Pana Dora's Onyx Black, Memo Paris' Abu Dhabi and many others. The small changes never pan out to anything relevant in this genre as the execution of cinnamon & saffron is almost always subpar. People are voting for accords like floral & creamy, but to my nose, those aspects are nowhere to be found. It might have some creaminess on-skin, but the oriental accord completely overshadows it.
There's so much negative to say about both Dragon and Boadicea that I'm not entirely sure what direction I want to take the end of this review. I intentionally kept Dragon as the last fragrance as the positive coverage both on social media and on Parfumo made me think this product would be a competitor to Clive Christian's XXI: Art Deco - Blonde Amber. Boy, was I wrong - Dragon instead serves as one of Boadicea's most embarrassing lowlights across their entire catalogue. An imitation of a fragrance for which the brand already has an imitation for, with the base DNA being an imitation for what could very well be fragcom's most overrated fragrance profile. Dragon obviously has other shortfalls too, incl. the €1,150/100ml retail price tag and relative to the profile, a moderate performance.
To close with, my experience with Boadicea as a brand in the past 3 weeks has been nothing short of abysmal. I entered the brand, expecting them to create superior versions of existing profiles in the market. A big reason why I was expecting that is because that's what I was led to believe Boadicea's whole gig was: they take a profile and improve upon it so they can sell it for big bucks. Across the 34 fragrances that I smelled, the only scent that outclassed the original was Hanuman (FWIW: Knight of Love could be another one as I haven't smelled the inspiration). One of the scents in the Sapphires Collection was good-to-great (Tobacco Sapphire), another one of the premium-priced products was good-to-great (Nemer), and a couple scents in the Original Collection were good (Energizer, Jubilee); so around 6-8 fragrances were between a 7.5 and an 8.5 in my ratings.
However, given that more than 2/3 of the catalogue has some type of an inspiration behind it, it sure is a harsh reality for both fans of Boadicea and those interested in the brand that nearly not a single fragrance in their catalogue significantly improves upon the original's concept. Performance wise the products were largely light and looking at the whole catalogue from a value perspective, there's nothing positive to say about the brand, given the average retail price for a product is north of €600/100ml. For that money, you can buy every Clive Christian product, approx. 90% of Royal Crown's products, and approx. 80-85% of Roja's products. Boadicea never offered me even one experience that was anywhere near the peaks of these 3 brands and that makes me appreciate these brands even more as it has given me a different type of appreciation for the type of product that I'm willing to spend my money on.
2 Comments
NicheOnly
BertolucciK
Patj1994
Orodion94
Rogaux
Centurio1990
Jusch1995
Mo666
Matthias87
FragCloud
