Boadicea the Victorious
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Bergamot and violet leaf create a brisk, almost green introduction, with rosewood threading through like copper wire. Gardenia emerges almost immediately, threatening to dominate, creating a fresh-floral brightness that feels momentarily restrained and composed.
The fragrance explodes into its floral maximalism—carnation's spice tangles with jasmine's indolic richness whilst lily of the valley adds a cool, slightly metallic undertone. The orris and iris dust everything with powdery refinement, preventing the composition from becoming a mere floral soup, and the ylang ylang introduces a honeyed, slightly tropical warmth that sits uncomfortably against the cooler florals, creating genuine tension and interest.
Cedar and sandalwood emerge with quiet authority, their woody dryness cutting through the lingering florals' sweetness. Musk and amber settle into a soft, skin-close base that smells vaguely powdered and subtly green—the fragrance becomes more intimate here, losing its opening brightness but gaining an almost vintage, slightly faded elegance, like finding an old silk scarf in a drawer.
Conquer opens with a deceptive freshness—bergamot and violet leaf snap against your skin like morning frost on garden stone, but within moments the gardenia and rosewood begin their insistent whisper, hinting at the floral edifice that's about to consume everything. This is Ernest Daltroff working in his element: a maximalist floral that doesn't apologise for its ambition. The heart is frankly baroque, a heaving mass of carnation, rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, and ylang ylang wrestling for dominance whilst iris and orris root anchor the chaos with a powdery, almost vintage restraint. There's something peculiarly indolic about this composition—those ten floral notes create a slightly feverish, almost animalic quality that prevents Conquer from ever feeling merely pretty.
The woody base of cedar and sandalwood arrives like a relief, grounding the florals' hysteria, though the amber and musk ensure this never becomes austere or cerebral. What emerges is a fragrance of genuine idiosyncrasy: neither entirely feminine nor masculine, but rather the scent of someone who wears florals with absolute conviction and refuses to whisper about it. The powdery, green accords (76% and 52% respectively) give it a slightly retro quality—there's a whisper of the 1950s in its bones, though not in a nostalgia-baiting way.
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3.9/5 (428)