Ardent
Boadicea the Victorious

This, is the first, I've tried anything by this house. I figured by the notes listed, I'd enjoy it. I wasn't wrong. The spicy, saffron-rose combo has been done to death, but I am always a fan. The top is dry, soft. The rose is sweetened by hedione and beeswax. Definitely leans feminine.

A vanilla, resinous-amber base. Nothing out of the ordinary here. A milder rose-saffron offering.

I'm completely speechless... That's it.

At first spray it reminds me of a few Montale, because the rose/oud combo that I get is similar to how Montale smells. The rose is the dominant note and it's thick and sweet, so it paints a picture of a big velvety dark red kind of rose. Saffron and coriander are enveloping the rose with a spicy aroma and a heady jasmine is amplifying the flowery aspect.
Now on to the sweet part, the beeswax, benzoin and vanilla are raising the sweet level to a high degree and the ones that prevent it to not reach the cloying level are a dusty amber with slightly smoky labdanum and oud. I'm glad that in the dry down the sweetness loses ground in favor of the last mentioned notes. The rose is still going strong (and that's the primary note on the whole), but in the end is on par with the benzoin/vanilla.

This is beautiful, really lyrical.
The mixture is incomparably achieved around the light chord of a Turkish "red" rose, fine, transparent, that extends between floral notes and memories of sweet natural simplicity. I was disappointed at the beginning: too light, first, too creamy, then, not very durable and almost imperceptible. I decided to put a good amount on my skin: I received an immediate, erotic and surprising invitation to the pleasure of carnal abandonment.
I do not see another possible intentionality for this perfume: its task is evidently erotic, at the same time distant, without any flamboyance or animal magnetism. This is simple, clean but humid, quite warm and beautifully detached, as if it had no nucleus, as if the rose was only surrounded by artistic touches that enhanced its shyness. And, nevertheless, it is ardent: this really ascends, in spite of its proximity to the skin, and manages to represent a game of refined voluptuousness.
One of the best natural manipulations of the Turkish rose that i have smelled. There is, beneath this intense pasty redness, a velvety white essence close to a bitter and drunken sweetness, (musk?), which makes it slightly extravagant. Also, I think that the characteristic "pasticity" of this aroma is due to the wonderful wax covering that extends the set of notes, guessing here the intention to create a kind of perfumed cloister candle: here is a soft and intimate perfume, " sticky "and almost monastic in a certain sense, balanced between the abysmal and the natural, with a sweetness very well hidden in the general aroma of sensual rose (with natural edges and chords of light and shade).
Nocturnal and clear. Beautiful composition