Yves Saint Laurent died in 2008. One of his house's biggest fragrances came out six years after that.
The house began in couture. Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge founded it in 1961, Saint Laurent as the designer, Berge running the business. He spent decades reshaping how women dressed, putting them in tuxedos and sharp trouser suits. He died in Paris in 2008, aged 71.
That year split the name in two. The same year Saint Laurent died, L'Oreal bought YSL Beaute, the perfume and cosmetics arm. From then on the fashion and the fragrance were different companies, and L'Oreal has made every YSL scent since.
The perfume story runs on one word: Opium. The original launched in 1977, a heavy spicy oriental that caused an outrage over its drug-referencing name and became one of the ten best-selling perfumes in the world. In 2014, six years after Saint Laurent had gone, L'Oreal released Black Opium, a coffee-and-vanilla gourmand aimed at a younger crowd. It borrowed the old name and almost none of the old formula, put a coffee note front and centre, and became a modern blockbuster.
Here is the receipt. The Opium name carries decades of couture prestige. Black Opium, the bottle most people actually buy now, is a L'Oreal creation from after Saint Laurent had died, built for the mass market. That is not an insult, it is a very good coffee-vanilla scent. Just know that the heritage on the label and the liquid in the bottle come from different eras, and you pay for both.
Eclipse is our Black Opium, the coffee-and-vanilla rush in a UK-made 35% spray. Vector Y covers the men's Y. See the full Yves Saint Laurent collection or read the best YSL dupes in the UK.
