Opium was MASSIVE in the 80s. To me, it’s practically like the scent of the Eighties. Every sophisticated but slightly batso older woman i knew in that decade seemed to favour it. It’s distinct.
So now, here we go with the relaunch & it is a la the D & G Tarot Fragrances in that Y.S.L. is giving the juice an Occult spin. I mean, the “scented salamander?” Would love to know the thinking behind this. Is it is emphasise the mystical, Oriental style as opposed to something linked to smack?
Mythologically, the Salamander is fabulous, in the real sense of the word. Reputedly a powerful poisonous creature, it’s colder than ice and thus immune to fire. So it’s a bit like a less noble Phoenix and most often depicted as perfectly happy, basking amidst flames. Some ancient pics of Adam and Eve have a Salamander, not the Snake/Lilith tempting Eve with the apple.
So a Scented Salamander translated into being a woman would be cold & icy of persona but happiest in dramatic surroundings, poisonous and cool…? Okay, she’s a redhead so there is another Fire reference and what is she doing with the bottle. It looks like she’s about to chuck it at someone.
See Also: Matthew McConaughey’s perfume ad.
Tags: Adam and Eve, astrology Tarot fragrance, Lilith, Opium, Phoenix, Salamander, Salamander astrology, Scented Salamander, Tarot Fragrance
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Or like she’s going to take a swig from it!
I remember Opium, so overpowering, I was never brave enough to wear it!
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lmfao! SHE DOES DOESNT SHE!
would that make her drunk or just drugged outa her mind?
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it was also banned in some doctors surgeries, along with poison as it was setting off asthma attacks. I could not tolerate either as strong scents give me headachbut I love the lighting in the image and want her anklet!
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LOL How funny is that! Yeah the 80’s had some really strong scents…remember Farenheit?
Also, is the bottle actually that big?
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oooo don’t think I heard of that one, was it as bad? did it come complete with diamante’s and hair that kept hairspray companies at the top of the stock exchange? I remember my nightclub g/f in the early 90’s could snap trees with her hair. I was more pseudo echo with the depressed side fringe LOL ahhh the memories are so not hot right now
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Wow! I didn’t know this – this just adds injury to insult: I was pretty amazed when my Cancerian mother-in-law visited and brought me a gift of .. ‘Poison’!! Her son is asthmatic.
I couldn’t help feeling that sub-consciously she wouldn’t mind me being out of the picture. Especially after she cried most of the day we got married: “He’s all yours!!” she sniffed.
Pretty funny considering she left my hubby with his dad when he was 12. She couldn’t handle his father, but seemed to think a 12 year old could? What is Cancer when it is not nurturing?
Handing out Poison I guess!
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Moms like that give me the shits. Get a life for Chrissy sakes…
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Oh dear that has lower Kataka all over it..is Imelda Marcos one of her friends?
Cancers, and I am one btw, can also be amazingly selfish, not to mention certainly not above turning on the waterworks when in public view then calmly rearranging the pantry when the audience is missing.
But I am also guilty of using poison… the Pure Poison version that is. After the Scorp nothing but the strongest concentrate would do.
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Hi Fallen! Wondered where you were x How are you doing? Guess Pure Poison version sort of like ~RAID~ (roach, ant, spider killer for those unfamiliar)
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lol noooo it was the 80’s too trying to squeeze a few extra years in there but it was late 80’s sigh
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Opium and Obsession are my favourite perfumes, and the only legit perfumes I will wear. I’m not big into covering up my natural scent (only use this funky natural crystal deodorant that my doc recommended) and usually avoid it at all costs, but when I want to make a huge LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME statement ala my leo in mercury I go for (coughknockoff) opium and (not-so-knock-off) Obsession. My mom gave me a knock-off bottle of each when I was just a babe and told me it “drives the boys wild.” ;D
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I remember Obsession being the “it” fragrance of the 80’s but yeah Opium is a classic. There’s all these other Opium versions now like Hypnotic Opium, etc…
I think she’s supposed to be dressed like some harem girl…pouring on the Opium like gasoline on a fire? Combust! plz. j/k
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I wonder what she is doing with the bottle… it is gigantic!! Maybe she is the size of a salamander & the bottle is really just normal size. She is taking a swig before she chucks it at the photographer??
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Her hands are huge!
… I have already admitted to be obsessed with hands…..
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She part alien/mannequin/vampirian Barista
Note the waxey like skin….Not completely human..Teeth ready to arm any moment…
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Omg your right sweetpea!
I was too busy focusing on the hands when clearly I should have been looking at the ‘not completely human’ features! She could rip someone to shreds…
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But OMG you’re right! My first thought was that she is really a man..?
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Maybe it’s just me, but that gold lid looks a pretty suss shape the way she’s holding it.
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the knob? (sorry – filthy pun)
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indigofish that was what I was thinking…I mean I know sexual imagery is rife in advertising but yeah it is a hell of a golden knob…
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I loved Opium and still do – though these days its just an evening thing – it was strong, spiced but still a perfume – and quickly settled on me (never had any complaints about it being too strong or wafty) and I’ve a nose/perfume sensitive family.
Hated Obsession – was something chemical and powdery that gave me headaches..on other people and much worse on me the couple of times I succuumbed to ‘try it’ from friends.
These days I love the no longer manufactured but gorgeous Madness by Chopard – which is another that’s way too strong on first spray and just out the bottle – but half an hour later has settled to subtle and gorgeous. It works on me – but is atrocious on my sister. You’ve just gotta love the interplay between your own body and perfumes – I love that mysterious alchemy that makes one work and another not.
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pouring it pver frontage?
my partner wears opium for men, and sometimes farenheit. he’s a leo, no surprise. oh and the guy’s stuff is far sexier than the women’s version, if you can find it…
salamanders remind me of the simpsons ep where homer builds a zen garden and a “screamapilla” moves in. he reads a pamphlet provided by a ranger-type dude and despairs “… and is sexually attracted to fire!?!”
Doesn’t the salamander have a connection with alchemy and the fire used turn lead to gold?
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yes, indigofish, ’salamander’ is an alchemical symbol and metaphor for a process in the Work (which I can’t remember right now, yikes!)
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omg my BogeyMum still wears it.
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yeah andshelooks like a corpse too.
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i can’t even look at that pic without almost passing out cos i have nasal freakout flashbacks rather suffocate than whiff opium anytime soon… lol yes anklet is rather covet-able….
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Uber flask of booze was my first thought
Opium may be illegal to smoke but not to drink. Is that her message?
A wicked elixer?
Did have a bottle in the 80’s. Yes, asked for it for Christmas and the ex hub got it for me. Would find it a bit heavy now a days. But I can smell it just thinking about it!
Doesn’t Taboo also smell a bit like Opium?
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I was 18ish in the late 80s and Opium was my signature perfume. I used to spray the stuff bloody everywhere – discretely I thought … but now I realise I must have fried people’s nasal synapses with my Opium saturation levels.
But as an iconic symbol I think it represents a desire to express the dark feminine, the less sanitised facets of the feminine. I can sense this. A desire to be free from the bonds of “the good mother”, the “homely wife” and instead embrace being a emotionally and materially self sufficient, take no bullshit, take me as I am or fuq off independant woman.
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Yeah, asked for a divorce right after I got that bottle. Life was never the same and rightly so..
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Can’t wear it myself as most commercial perfumes give me bad headaches. But my friend’s European mother, the height of sophistication to a provincial Aussie girl, wore it in the late 80’s. I can still conjure up that smell, and with it my idea of Europe that went with it, the small perfect cars, the heirloom furniture, the beautiful clothes that were ironed before being put away, the immaculate makeup for going shopping in, the way the family would all sit down together for lunch and drink wine out of crystal glasses, and the way that my freidn’s fridge always had fresh home-made mayonnaise in a beautiful antique german crock. Oh these were what dreams were made of. If only my family wa like my friend’s family, I used to think, oh how life would change. Opium summed it all up.
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Yep, loved it in the 80s – mostly because Jo Bjelke Petersen had it banned in Queensland cos of the name – so of course as an opponent of all things Jo I just HAD to have it. I even made my madly conservative parents bring a duty-free bottle back from OS – heeeheee.
Now I’m a slightly batso older woman – thanks Mystic that made my day, don’t know about sophisticated though, but I try – and I still love Opium and get compliments whenever I wear it.
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Whoops, that should be Joh not Jo Bjelke Petersen – those who know my current situation would call that a freudian slip
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nothing wrong with being a slightly batso older woman – don’t you worry about that (ick – JBP joke)
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Thanks
I actually quite like being slighty batso now that I’m older and trust Mystic to make such a great allusion.
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I loved a slightly softer version of Opium a couple of years ago – Opium Fraiche. It was released for summer and was alcohol free, pale in colour but still Opium. Just gorgeous.
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My 80’s Opium memory – My well- to-do older neighbour ( I was 19, she was probably all of 30) heard I was going to a nearby larger town that had a perfume store and asked if I would get her a large bottle of Opium. I didn’t tell her I was going on the back of boyfriend’s Suzuki.
Arriving at the perfume counter I had several saleswomen give me the evil eye as I was dressed in grotty leathers with helmut-head hair and all other customers and staff were looking poised and polished. I took great delight in pulling a wad of cash out of my jacket and saying ” Large bottle of Opium please”-
oh i like that tale
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more fun to smoke it in a hookah…..the opium, not the perfume
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Opium is too much. A receptionist at a place where I once temped wore it, and a wall of Opium at 8.30am was enough to turn me off it for life.
Samsara by Guerlain is a better Oriental, if one must – could wear during the day POSSIBLY.
The 80s: surely Paris and Poison were more representative?
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Ohhhhh how tacky Opium during the day.
Yep love Paris too – it was my day-time perfume, whereas Opium was and is only for After Five.
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call me whatever, but I don’t think a salamander theme would help sell perfume? much as i think salamanders are cool, fire elementals, etc, but the general consuming populace so wouldn’t get it? what is it with perfumes, has saturn in Libra tweaked things a bit wrongly. or maybe all those planets in Aqua trine libra whatever are wierding it out too much (disclaimer, nothing is too wierd for me)
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UP I have this idea that a lot of people without knowledge of salamanders as fire elementals are looking at this ad and going, ‘why are they using a brand of salmon to try to sell this stuff…is it because the perfume is strong enough to null the scent of fish…like that’s a good thing isn’t it?’
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“The Scented Salamander” is a perfume blog: http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/
Mystic, I think you found an Opium ad from the blog with a watermark on it!
Not to put a damper on any of this alchemical speculation… -
That is SO funny! And there I thought Y.S.L. really going for it with the alchemical references…Lol and thank you!
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BUT speaking of D&G’s Tarot fragrances, I have recently succumbed to No 18, La Lune. I absolutely love this light fragrance, not just because I’m a Kataka. I am also trying Rose The One by D & G.
Though by far the most positive reactions I’ve had was when I wore Chance Au Fraiche by Chanel.
I LOVE the Oriental scents, but can’t carry it off… the few times I splashed it on made me feel like I had misplaced my plush tent and I should be wearing at least an arm’s worth of exotic bangles. Though I adore that look, I am more anime modern/romantic than aromatic gypsy…
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