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BARRR – :
Well, this is a pleasant surprise! To be honest, upon spritzing myself with Boadicea the Victorious WARRIOR (from The Exclusives line, more on that below), I was initially sure that there had been a decanting error involved. Could WARRIOR really smell like COCO MADEMOISELLE when WARRIORESS smelled like a well-worn saddle?
Looking at the notes, however, I am forced to concede that inside my atomizer is indeed WARRIOR. I must say that this fragrance is more appropriate to a Fashion Warrior than anyone else, and perhaps a gender-bending one at that. This is a lovely composition for a lovely wearer, but for a warrior? Oh well, what’s in a name?
Which brings me to a few more Boadicea the Victorious/Bond no 9 similarities. Basically the names of their fragrances have no basis in reality. The folks at Bond just throw a dart at a map of Manhattan, and wherever it hits, that’s what the latest collaborative creation ends up being named. (A couple of times the darts were really far flung: Texas and New Orleans!!!) I feel that the same basic procedure is used chez Boadicea: DELICATE is not delicate, WARRIOR is certainly not warrioresque, and COMPLEX is not very complex at all.
Added to all of this, there is The Exclusive Exclusive concept which both Boadicea and Bond appear to be enamored of. It’s not enough that their regular juices run >$200 per 100ml. There it is written in bold letters, right on the Boadicea box: “Luxury Perfume Collection,” the redundancy of which (next to the price tag) can but generate skeptical doubts. No, both lines also have special categories of special überexclusive fragrances that cost even more!
Another interesting parallel involves the décalage–or broken communication network–running between the marketing and the production teams of each of these Luxury Perfume Houses. What appears to happen is this: those blending the new releases provide the marketing team with a sketch of the first draft of the scent. They take this outline of notes and run with it, managing to disseminate all manner of falsehoods vis-à-vis the final product. So, an accurate account of the notes is very difficult if not impossible to track down, and what you will find is often erroneous. BLEECKER STREET offers a case in point: in some places you’ll find BLEECKER described as an oriental gourmand, when in reality it is an herbal leather blend!
And, finally, last but not least, through producing so very many fragrances, both Boadicea and Bond have opened themselves up to countless allegations of plagiarism! Bond is denounced as a Creed rip-off; here you have me comparing WARRIOR (of all things) to COCO MADEMOISELLE!. The problem here is that everything smells like everything else to a greater or lesser extent. Therefore, when you produce dozens of perfumes in a very short period of time, there will be people who smell the familiar in what you have made, no matter how distinctive you may have thought it to be. As the allegations proliferate, others, too, begin to find familiar fragrances in each and every one of your new launches: it becomes, indeed, a sort of perfumista board game.
What is the lesson of this poignant little tale? Only time will tell.
And now for my review of WARRIOR: see COCO MADEMOISELLE.