Noble

Opening and middle notes, on my skin, smells like any drug store soap. After 30 min I detected some amber and NO Rose at all. Nothing animalic here, don't even look for it. If you like vintage fragrances before 2000s, you won't like this. This one is for the modern generation of gourmand loving folks. Leans masculine -Pass

Profoundly disturbing. Equally as much as Secretions Magnifiques. Not because it too smells like ejaculate, but rather it is similarly unsettling. All day I have had a face like a smacked arse. I've found myself subconsciously having contorted myself to make sure my wrist is as far away from my nose as possible, at times even behind my back. Don't get me wrong, I can almost see the appeal of this, but it's not for a man and definitely not for me. It gives me the same uneasy disturbed feeling I got when I found out that meat was made from animals. That horrible horrible feeling completely aside, it smells remarkably like my grandma. It suited her, I didn't really consider it her perfume though, rather just the way that old ladies smell. I can't think why someone would want to smell like this, surely it is a smell people would want to disguise? The opening is boozy and then it quickly becomes loud and old-fashioned, slightly medicinal, and very very strange. Such a huge departure from what is in the contemporary olfactory realm considered feminine, on a young and glamorous woman this might be a radical and sensual composition, beguiling menfolk by its familiar yet alien funk, an anti-venom to fizzy fruity florals by diversifying pop stars. Your grandmother would most likely be thrilled to bits with it (your mother not so much having rebelled against it with a thick hippy pachouli), but as much as I am trying to like it (and I really really want to, I love the idea of wearing a perfume featuring real ambergris and I am a huge fan of the brand Boadicea) this makes me feel incredibly uneasy, like I'm being suffocated inside a geriatric care home, being fed gherkins, mushy sprouts and prune juice, surrounded by jaundiced photographs of stern people not smiling for the birdie, ancient biscuit tins with ugly painted murals of couples in Victorian dress, and imminent death.

BTV Noble I went into this blind, knew very little of the brand, and was only really equipped with the info of it having ambergris. I knew nothing of price or notes and left it intentionally that way so I could “interrogate” the fragrance with no preconceived notions. This one took me by surprise. It was obvious early on that this had a very high end rose note. The first 30 minutes had a slight rambunctiousness to it that I wasnt sure where it would take things. Once that dissipated, there was a very-gentle-yet-full-bodied rose that has a powdery softness to it. Elegant would be a good word to describe it as well. The ambergris in this I perceive to be more a canvas that the artist painted on rather than a note in and of itself. It provides depth, life, and a halo effect that very little else can. As for the rose, the powdery nature keeps it perfectly unisex and appropriate for just about any situation.

Well, there's definitely more going on with Boadicea the Victorious NOBLE than amber and rose, especially at the opening, when both dark (a smidgeon of oakmoss, perhaps?) and citrus (probably bergamot) elements circulate about before making way for the focal notes, yes, rose and ambergris. According to the BtV website, this is real, as they put it, "costly" ambergris, which I am taking on faith means that it actually was excreted from the intestines of a sperm whale. So this is it: real ambergris, at last. Once the opening notes have cleared out, the rose-ambergris combination is very pleasing, smooth, sophisticated, perhaps even NOBLE. I like it a lot, especially as the amber melts into my skin, melding with the rose. Good longevity and medium sillage. Not a revolutionary creation, but certainly a fine one.

Where can I try it, in the Netherlands?