Opium Yves Saint Laurent

It is widely known that Opium has revolutionized perfume marketing by name, bottle, price and advertising. He paved the way for a new era of communication, distribution, and also brought the Orientals back into fashion in the 1980s, after a decade of florals and citruses.

Yves Saint Laurent wanted a fragrance that evokes the Orient, and already had in mind a bottle with oriental pompom, style Napoleon III. The final bottle will be inspired by an "inro", a Japanese wooden case in which the samurai kept the opium. This gave rise to the idea of ​​the name, provocative and sulphurous, which almost never saw the light of day, because the group owning the perfumes strongly opposed it. He was saved by the conviction, perseverance and insistence of Yves Saint Laurent himself.

The olfactory idea was to launch a powerful and tenacious perfume, in line with Shalimar, that could hold a night of celebration, and appeal to both French and American women. The perfumers were inspired by Shalimar, but also and especially Youth Dew, typically American perfume, very powerful, which will make say Estée Lauder, at the launch of Opium in the United States: "it's Youth Dew with an acorn ! ". We find an oriental accord refreshed by a head citrus, tangerine, lemon and bergamot, but modernized by aldehydes and fruity notes, peach and plum. The spicy floral bouquet is composed of rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, clove and cinnamon.

The background is woody, cedar, sandalwood, balsamic, rockrose, benzoin, animal, castoreum and musk, and it is of a foolproof persistence: the musks are always detectable after a week!

The ensemble gives a baroque effect, complex, extravagant, intriguing. It is less animal and cooler than Youth Dew, which I find more sickening, almost unbearable. Opium is a very beautiful composition, which has contributed much to the prestigious image of Yves Saint Laurent perfumes, but it has changed a lot over the reformulations and may be more difficult to appreciate today.

Traducted from an original article by Jeanne Doré AuParfum