Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent
465 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Clove and bergamot ignite with peppery verve, immediately complicated by plum's dark sweetness and mandarin's bright counterpoint. The spice here feels almost aggressive, like walking through a spice market where the air itself has weight and texture.
The composition settles into something more honeyed and resinous—cinnamon and carnation emerge alongside creeping patchouli, whilst sandalwood adds a dusty, almost woody-floral dimension. The peach adds a peachy-stone quality that bridges the florals and the amber accumulating beneath, creating an almost unctuous warmth.
Amber, vanilla, and benzoin dominate, with frank myrrh and frankincense adding a smoky, ceremonial quality reminiscent of temple incense. The fragrance becomes increasingly abstract and skin-scent intimate, a warm ambery-amber whisper with faint cedar bones and musk undertones.
Opium is a fragrance that refuses subtlety, and therein lies its hypnotic power. Sieuzac has crafted something that feels simultaneously ancient and transgressive—a scent that smells like stolen incense from a temple, mixed with the sweet fermentation of overripe stone fruit left to decay in spiced wine. The clove-bergamot opening crackles with almost medicinal sharpness, but this is immediately softened by plum's jammy sweetness, creating a paradox: something simultaneously austere and decadent.
What makes Opium so arresting is how the spice accord (88%) operates not as decoration but as structure. Cinnamon and carnation don't sweeten here—they act as connective tissue between the amber-based warmth below and the jasmine-touched florals trying to assert themselves above. There's a creeping patchouli-sandalwood current that suggests soil and dry leaves, grounding what could otherwise float away into pure perfume-y abstraction.
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3.8/5 (418)