Opium Eau de Parfum 2009
The 2009 reformulation opens softer than its predecessor, with lily of the valley lending an unexpected freshness to the bergamot introduction.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 9 accords.
Every perfume in Sillage is represented as a distribution across canonical accord slugs — a lingua franca for scent. Two fragrances with overlapping fingerprints are scent-twins, even if they share no literal note.
- Amber80
- Floral70
- Patchouli60
- Warm Spicy
The note pyramid
- Lily of the Valley
- Bergamot
- Jasmine
- Amber
- Opoponax
- Patchouli
By the editors · 2 min readThe 2009 reformulation opens softer than its predecessor, with lily of the valley lending an unexpected freshness to the bergamot introduction. This brightness quickly recedes as jasmine takes center stage, rounder and less piercing than the original's spice-heavy heart. The shift feels deliberate, trading the 1977 version's confrontational warmth for something more wearable in contemporary settings.
Amber and opoponax create a resinous base that retains the DNA of the original while smoothing its sharper edges. The patchouli here is cleaner, less earthy than vintage formulations—a nod to modern tastes that may disappoint purists but makes the fragrance more approachable. What remains is a recognizable echo: still Oriental, still enveloping, but with the volume turned down to accommodate offices and close quarters where the original would have dominated.
Scent twins
Factual metadata (name, house, year, notes) is seeded from public datasets. The editorial reading and scent fingerprint are written by Claude against our house style — none of it is scraped prose. Read our methodology.
