Opium Yves Saint Laurent 1977 Parfum
Opium announces itself as a cultural event as much as a fragrance.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 15 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.
- Amber75
- Incense70
- Vanilla70
- Patchouli65
- Sandalwood60
By the editors · 2 min readOpium announces itself as a cultural event as much as a fragrance. The Parfum concentration opens with jasmine's rich indolic bloom alongside plum's dark sweetness and clove's medicinal warmth — a top accord that requires no apology. The heart is an orchestral exercise: rose and patchouli anchor the classical Oriental structure, cinnamon provides heat, peach contributes softness without feminizing the spice, lily of the valley introduces a fleeting green note that disappears quickly in such warm surroundings.
The base is the reason for the Parfum concentration: myrrh, frankincense, opoponax, and benzoin layer into the deep incense-oriental accord that became the genre's reference. Amber, vanilla, and coconut provide sweetness; vetiver and cedar provide structure. Opium remains the benchmark of the 1970s Oriental school — dense, unapologetic, designed to fill a room and remain on skin for hours.