Boadicea the Victorious — Notorious
Essence
Notorious is the 2016 oriental-vanilla wildcard in the Boadicea catalogue - a dark-chocolate, castoreum, and saffron composition wrapped around the house’s leather-incense-patchouli base. It is one of the few mainstream niche fragrances to commit hard to a recognisable dark chocolate note, and the most distinctive opening Boadicea has produced. In wear it reads less as a cocoa gourmand and more as a smoky, leathery chypre wearing a cocoa veil - the chocolate is structural, not edible.
Scent Profile
The opening 10 - 20 minutes is a thick blast of cinnamon, saffron, and Sicilian mandarin against an immediate ylang-ylang creaminess. Within the first three to five minutes, the cocoa note slides in alongside the incense and castoreum - this is the famous Notorious “dark chocolate opening” that wearers consistently cite. The chocolate here is bitter, slightly powdery, more 85%-cacao-bar than ganache, and it is held in tension against the saffron’s leather-edged spice. Some wearers report a fleeting medicinal facet from the saffron-castoreum pair; others find a faint fruity hint they cannot place (likely the mandarin doing under-the-radar work). Between thirty minutes and three hours, the chocolate begins to recede - and this is the move that divides Notorious’s audience. A widely-quoted wearer reviews captures the disappointment: “The opening is amazingly delicious, but not in a cloying cake-related way, just chocolate and dark complexities.
Performance
Projection is strong for the first hour (clear arm’s length cloud), moderate through hours two and three, and skin-close after that. Sillage is above average in cool weather, average in warmth. On-skin longevity is consistently reported at 8 - 12 hours; on cloth the leather-incense-patchouli base persists for several days. Heat amplifies the castoreum to the edge of barnyard for some wearers; cool weather is where Notorious is unambiguously at its best, with the chocolate-incense pairing reading as Christmas-mass-meets-after-dinner-cocoa.
Wearing Context
Notorious is a cold-weather, evening fragrance - there is essentially no daytime, summertime, or office use case where it doesn’t draw attention. It excels at dinner parties, fireside reading, bonfire nights, and any setting where smoky-sweet projection is a feature, not a bug. One frequently-upvoted wearer reviews explicitly nominates it as a Guy Fawkes Night fragrance: “It just suits fireworks and bonfires. So good!” That captures both the cinnamon-and-smoke seasonal pitch and the brand’s deliberate British register.
Comparisons & DNA
The clearest sibling and the obvious reference point is Mugler A*Men Pure Havane and Pure Malt for the smoky-cocoa direction, though Notorious is far drier and far less sweet. Serge Lutens Borneo 1834 is the canonical dark-chocolate-patchouli-incense perfume, and Notorious can be read as a leather-forward, Boadicea-house-styled cousin to Borneo with cocoa instead of camphor and castoreum instead of cedar. Tom Ford Cafe Rose and Cafe Noir occupy adjacent territory but lean coffee rather than cocoa. Within the Boadicea catalogue, Notorious is closest in mood to Mayfair (both animalic-leather-incense) but distinguished by the chocolate-saffron opening, and to Bodacious (later 2021 release) in the warm-dark-spiced-gourmand direction, though Bodacious leans cherry-tobacco where Notorious leans cocoa-castoreum.
Reception
Wearer sentiment is mixed-positive with high variance. Praise clusters around the opening, blending quality, and Boadicea’s house-base integration; criticism clusters around the rapid loss of cocoa, the price, and an “incense-leather Boadicea drydown” that some find indistinguishable from other house releases. The dominant axis of polarisation is whether the wearer wants the chocolate to last (in which case Notorious disappoints) or whether they want a leather-chypre with a memorable chocolate hook (in which case it delivers).
Versions & Reformulation
Single composition, no known reformulations. Some wearer-forum posters report a difference between a 2023 sample and a later bottle purchase (“the experience was nothing like the tester from 2023, I had to let it go”); this is consistent with batch variation or sample-versus-bottle effects rather than a documented reformulation. There is no Notorious Intense or Notorious Extrait flanker.
Acquisition Notes
Notorious is a standalone 2016 EDP release in the brand’s broader oriental-vanilla family, sold in 100ml in the heavyweight glass bottle. Pricing has historically sat in the GBP 250 - GBP 350 GBP / $350 - $425 USD band; Avery Perfume Gallery and similar European niche retailers list it at the higher end (~EUR 450), and US third-party listings (Maxaroma, FragranceX, Jomashop when in stock) often run lower.
Notable Facts & Lore
- The brand frames Notorious as “an elixir of courage and defiance,” with marketing copy emphasising the Boadicea warrior-queen lineage and the dark-chocolate-incense-leather composition as a fragrance of “scandalous sensuality.”
- Perfumer attribution has not been publicly disclosed; the brand’s pattern of crediting only some perfumers (Provenzano for Mayfair and Regal; John Stephen for several earlier releases; Julie Lerendu for Opal) leaves Notorious uncredited, and Boadicea has not corrected wearer speculation.
- There is no documented celebrity association specific to Notorious.
- The most-circulated piece of wearer lore is the persistent recommendation as a Guy Fawkes / autumn-festival fragrance - the smoky-spicy-cocoa profile maps unusually well to bonfires and gunpowder festivals, and the recommendation has propagated through wearer reviews and wearer forum threads for several years.
- Notorious has not had a viral TikTok or video reviews moment of the Bodacious magnitude (which became a TikTok-driven sleeper hit after 2022 for its cherry-cognac opening), but it is consistently mentioned by long-time Boadicea collectors as one of the most distinctive and least replaceable scents in the line - the perfume that offers something other oriental-vanilla niches don’t.