I have been wearing Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium perfume
for over forty years.
Contact me with your address and I will send you an Opium-drenched card.
GZ was my mother’s interior designer. Eventually, she became my friend.
When I returned to Cleveland after ungrad and began teaching at a neighborhood school, I would often stop at her home after work and stay for dinner. I was lonely; few Shaker Heights grads returned to Cleveland back then.
GZ wore Opium. That is how it started. That is how it remains.
To this day, I rarely leave home without a spray by each ear.
Opium’s top notes1 are a mixture of fruit and spices, with madarin oranges, plum, clove, coriander, pepper, and bay leaf. Its floral middle notes consist predominantly of jasmine, rose, and Lily of the Valley, carnation, cinnamon and peach. It is underlined by the sweet woody base note containing sandalwood, cedarwood, myrrh, amber, incense musk and patchouli.
Yikes.
Opium caused a stir with its controversial name and brought accusations that Yves Saint Laurent was condoning drug use. In the U.S., a group of Chinese Americans demanded a name change and public apology from Saint Laurent for “his insensitivity to Chinese history and Chinese American concerns.”
The controversy helped aid the perfume’s publicity; it soon became a best-selling scent.
In 1978, a tall ship was rented for the launch party. Truman Capote sat at the ship’s helm in New York’s East Harbor (can’t you just see it?), the ship draped with banners of gold, red, and purple, and a 1000-pound bronze statue Buddha decorated with white orchids. YSL carried the Oriental theme into its packaging design: The red plastic container holding the perfume’s glass vial is inspired by the small Japanese lacquered cases worn hanging from the obi (a belt worn on traditional Japanese clothing that held perfumes, herbs and medicines.)
I cannot smell it when I wear it. Sure wish I could.
1Notes in perfumery are descriptors of scents, upon application. Notes are separated into three classes: top notes, middle notes, and base notes-groups of scents with respect to time after application.
