Opium Eau de Parfum 2009.

Opium arrived in a new flacon in autumn 2009, designed by art director Fabien Baron and Stefano Pilati. The reimagined EDP translated the 1977 icon into a warmer, more balsamic register, trading the original's sharper spice for deeper myrrh and a resinous opoponax heart that pulses beneath the jasmine. Karen Elson fronted the campaign, all copper hair and languid certainty. The bottle integrated its own sprinkle into the stopper, a small mechanical precision that echoed YSL's broader obsession with designing objects worth keeping.

The 2009 Opium leans into what makes oriental compositions worth revisiting: the tension between freshness and warmth. Bergamot and mandarin open bright, almost citrus-forward, before myrrh and jasmine take over. The inclusion of opoponax, a warm resin sometimes called sweet myrrh, alongside vanilla and patchouli creates a base that doesn't just linger. It evolves. Most flankers stay linear. This one shifts gears around hour three, when the citrus fades and the resinous core finishes what the opening started.

The bergamot and mandarin hit first, shimmering clean against the myrrh waiting beneath. Lily of the Valley appears briefly, a soft floral parenthesis before the jasmine arrives, thick, heady, the kind of white floral that announces itself without apology. By hour three the opening notes have fully surrendered. What remains is the real body of the fragrance: amber and opoponax weaving with patchouli and vanilla into something warm, almost sticky. Eight to ten hours on most skin. Closer and more intimate as it fades, but no less present.

Opium occupies a specific cultural register: the woman who knows exactly what she wants and doesn't soften herself to make others comfortable. It's been called polarizing, called mature, called too much. All of that is the point. YSL built its identity on boldness that doesn't ask permission, and Opium, in any vintage, has always been the olfactory equivalent of that posture.