It's not Opium as we know it. Even the sun bleached bronze box with gold lettering rimmed in red testifies to this. Opium Vapeurs de Parfum is a lighter yet ultimately moodier sexy beast than one would imagine. Hazy like heat, Opium Vapeurs de Parfum is a bold feminine flanker that some will search out in her own right.
She saunters in like the early rays of intensely hot sun on bleached stone that stings to bare feet yet thrills to sensation. She's not like her big sister, up all night and experiencing morning as an inconvenience of the night before. Instead she thrills, in her Floriental clad silk kimono, greeting the day, fresh and spicily floral yet wearing her Mandarin difference with aplomb. By mid afternoon though, she's a bit droopy eyelid heavy, longing for a catnap siesta on a too hot Summer's day.
Opium Vapeurs de Parfum's difference is in its key ingredients. Petitgrain bigrade oil replaces the familiar bitter orange and gives it a contemporary lift. The spiciness and piquancy of pink pepper replaces Opium's gorgeously warm cloves which gives Opium's carnation facet an update.
It's the deeply penetrating orange blossom atop Opium's usual jasmine sambac that really marks the difference with it's rush of floral high, sharp to the nose but announcing its own personality. Like her sister, Opium Vapeurs de Parfum shares incense notes and a faint woody dry down but these smell and feel different like another character entirely. It's almost like smelling a scarf steeped in Opium that's been left forlornly forgotten in the sun and is re-found weeks later, absorbing all its experiences and releasing them faintly, telling its own story.
Opium Vapeurs de Parfum is available nationwide from 18th April 2012 pried £46 (50ml EDT), £58 (75ml EDT) and £72 (125ml EDT).
Hi Katie, can't believe no one's commented yet on your gorgeous review. Your perception of the fragrance matches mine entirely, and possibly your view of Mere Opium reflects the old formulation? Because Opium was like a bad, bad James Bond girl and for some reason she is much more tamed and politically correct in the new bottle. I should know - my mother marinated in it for two decades. And for this reason I could never bring myself to wear it.
ReplyDeleteVapeurs de Parfum seems like a different fragrance altogether. Maybe the bad Bond girl had a beautiful girl after a close encounter with a French aristocrat on the leather back seat of this Aston Martin, and this is what the daughter is wearing?
Anyway, I'm getting one :-D
Just ordered some online and can't wait to receive after reading your brilliant review
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