Jo's Scent Notes: Boadicea the Victorious Andraste
Summer. Flowers. English country gardens. Personally, I didn’t get nearly enough of these, in 2026. My garden became so crisped and brown and depressing that for the first time ever (and I know a lot of other gardeners who felt the same), it wasn’t really somewhere I wanted to be. And after a promising start to the season at the Chelsea Flower Show, when things were still florabundant, my usual visits to National Trusts and other open gardens didn’t happen, either.
However, when this arrived on my desk, I fell on it – not least because of the gorgeous bottle, which I’ll come on to. Andraste, from Boadicea the Victorious, is a sumptuous floral – and let me start by saying that I am rarely seduced by a floral fragrance. I look ‘girl-y’ – blonde, blue eyes, can’t help it – and I sort of feel I have to wear woody, tethered, deep scents as an olfactory counterpoint.
This, though, had me at first spritz. Not over-sweet, but… really garden-y! There’s honeysuckle tangled through sweet wisteria and rose, with jasmine scampering throughout. (I’m experimenting with something similar in my actual garden, via a non-pruning trial. We’ll see how that works out...!) There’s a nimbus of powdery iris in there, too – a touch of the ‘Mummy’s handbag’, which I am often drawn to.
But maybe what I really love about Andraste is that it isn’t, actually, as pretty-pretty as that list of ingredients makes it sound, or the florals suggest, at first sniff. It develops an intriguing, slightly darker edge – a touch of something cooll, herbaceous and camphorous (which turns out to be eucalyptus), soft leather, incense, a dash of smoky Lapsang Souchong tea (my favourite 4 p.m. brew, as it happens), as well as a zesty bergamot note and a dash of aromatic thyme in the opening. It’s rooted, though, in woods and vetiver, which give great staying power but also balance the floralcy. Boadicea describe Andraste as having ‘metallic thorns and a scent of storm’, and there is, actually, something humid and brooding going on here. It is, I feel, a floral for those who don’t usually like florals!
I was lucky enough to meet Andraste’s two women perfumer/collaborators, Céline Herbette and Kamila Lelapova of fragrance house CPL Aromas, who explained how they started with the floral heart accord, and then worked from there. (I loved the relationship between these two, who clearly spark off each other beautifully.)
The rose note featured is the Lady Hamilton, captured via a very clever piece of CPL Aromas’ AromaSpace tech, which assesses the molecules in the air around a plant or wood, then enables their photorealistic re-creation back at base. (The same piece of kit was used to capture the scent of wisteria, which is spot-on.)
Boadicea the Victorious is a proudly British brand whose fragrances are often as bold as the ‘Boadicea’ name implies. They certainly aren’t shy and retiring, indeed often rocking a room. They can be your spear and chariot, for blazing through the world… smelling absolutely, show-stoppingly fabulous. Each of the bottles is emblazoned with its own shield, forged in the UK. In this case, the decoration is unusually feminine: a Celtic design circling a beautiful cut-out rose – definitely my ‘Bottle of the Year’ so far.
As for the name of this? The name references the Celtic warrior goddess, Andraste, who was invoked by Boadicea before confronting the Roman army. You have that strength and female power, combined with the slightly sultry atmosphere of a walled garden: flowers, medicinal herbs, foliage, the heat held within its walls.
Alongside the full sizes, Boadicea cleverly offer smaller bottles across their whole collection – a little 2ml sample, here, or a 10ml size (very useful for travel, as well as a low-commitment intro to see if you like the fragrance that’s taken your fancy). You can also spend a happy time on the sixth floor of Harrods, in the Salon de Parfums, sniffing your way through what is a truly fascinating collection. Whatever you do, save space on your skin to try Andraste for yourself.
My own Summer 2026 garden story has a happy ending, meanwhile. Those brown, crisped leaves have actually turned green again, which seemed like some kind of horticultural miracle – but none other than Great Dixter’s Fergus Garrett explained it to me: the plant shuts down chlorophyll production, leaves shrivel or turn grey, but when rain comes, they literally go green again, which I’d thought was a hallucination – but turns out to be real.
Nature is marvellous, isn’t it? And honestly, so is Andraste.
From £29.50 for 10ml eau de parfum (100ml bottle pictured is priced £295) – buy here
