Opium in the original release

When Opium came out in the late seventies it was the adjunct of Yves Saint Laurent’s  Chinese couture collection.  Useless to ponder what effect all those coolie hats and quilted  gold lame jackets might have had on ingredient selection, the perfume was then owned by Squib/ Beechnut, the formula a matter of corporate calculation.  Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge no longer owned the YSL perfumes.  Instead they received a five percent royalty and the right to veto products inexpressive of the Saint Laurent aesthetic.

There was one change though, according to a source Chandler Burr quoted in  The Perfect Scent, Opium represented the first time a fine fragrance oil was made very cheaply.  You can draw the same conclusion from Edmond Roudnitska who described Opium as “L’Origan without the flowers”.  Stripped down, mostly basenotes by 1977 the return to the soft floral oriental was not surprising. The YSL backer Richard Salomon of Charles of the Ritz  had  risen through the ranks at Coty before he founded his business and  when more YSL perfumes were required after the perfume arm was sold, the American  productions were revamped versions of earlier Coty successes starting with Opium. Continue reading →