Opium Eau de Toilette, a sulfurously addictive fragrance. Today, the house Yves Saint Laurent is the international leader in luxury fashion. Since 1961, when the designer founded his house, success has never left him, and yet YSL was not the perfect couturier.
Opium remains the most scandalous perfume from the house Yves Saint Laurent, so much has it been talked about for its wild force, its bold and searing sillage that could only be noticed and either loved or hated. Opium was launched in 1977 in the full splendor of its extremes as an Eau de Parfum, but its Eau de Toilette version, released the same year and also composed by Jean-Louis Sieuzac, is equally well known. Might Opium Eau de Toilette be a more approachable perfume than its so boisterously wild counterpart?
Opium Eau de Toilette, or the airy oriental by Jean-Louis Sieuzac for Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent wanted to offer haute couture collections that were varied, original and above all unprecedented, not merely to shock but above all to create an event, the sensation of opening doors onto the imagination that did not exist before him. With his choice for the fragrant composition of Opium, he once again proved himself the master of the sensational.
Because Opium, composed by Jean-Louis Sieuzac, already behind the cult Grey Flanel the previous year, has nothing in common with other perfumes: it exalts the Orient, sensuality, spices, opulent flowers and sweet fruity gourmand touches. Opium Eau de Parfum is a cocktail of daring, created for the empress of China, as Yves Saint Laurent put it. Above all, it is a perfume that seeks to break with traditional codes in order to offer new olfactory paths.
However, that same year, Opium was offered as an Eau de Parfum but also as an Eau de Toilette. Opium Eau de Toilette, still composed by Jean-Louis Sieuzac, is much lighter than its brilliant alter ego while offering a fragrant journey just as exhilarating as the Eau de Parfum.
A perfume with a scandalously evocative name, Opium is a door open onto the imagination, a journey toward the unknown, toward an extraordinary, mysterious elsewhere, rich in sensations and emotions. Yves Saint Laurent, on Opium Eau de Toilette.
A many-faceted face for an intoxicating Opium YSL Eau de Toilette
To compose Opium Eau de Toilette, Jean-Louis Sieuzac naturally drew on the beauty of some facets of the so splendid Opium Eau de Parfum. Thus, in Opium Eau de Toilette, we find notes of opulent flowers, aldehydes and of course oriental depths. But the originality of Opium Eau de Toilette compared to the Eau de Parfum lies in the presence of much more delicate flowers than in the original, which give it a new lightness, more approachable for those who would not dare venture onto the terrain of Opium Eau de Parfum.
Thus Opium Eau de Toilette opens on dynamic, tangy notes of mandarin and bergamot. We are surprised to discover, in this Opium Eau de Toilette, pretty and delicate notes of lily of the valley giving the perfume an airy lift. In the heart, the opulence of Opium remains, but this time there are no candied fruity notes or powerful spices; Jean-Louis Sieuzac instead favors a slightly spicy carnation, better blended with a few smoky and mysterious notes of myrrh. Still, the depths of Opium Eau de Toilette display the same sensuality, with notes of warm woods and vanilla, but only opoponax remains as an animalic note, since Opium Eau de Toilette does not want to overplay its hand, but rather to take flight.