The Career of YSL Opium, An Interview of Perfumer Mathilde Laurent, Rose in Perfumery {The 5fth Sense in the News}
L'Express magazine regularly features articles on perfumes and perfumery (in French). I am catching up and calling your attention to these three last pieces:
Guillaume Crouzet writes about Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. 30 years later it is still alive and kicking. There is a diaporama you can leaf through during which you can also listen to a poem written by YSL.
Les Trente "Glorieuses" d'Opium........
Maïté Turonnet interviews perfumer Mathilde Laurent, the former in-house perfumer for Guerlain who is now working for Cartier. As you may have noticed, I am interested in the question of authorship and creation in perfumery. Laurent here indicates to us that when she debuted at Guerlain and worked under the stewardship of Jean-Paul Guerlain it was like working in the workshop of a Renaissance painting master where this one would give general guidelines and ideas and the students would then develop these into perfumes.
Héloïse Gray writes about the comeback of the rose in perfumery and how it is overcoming its old-fashioned image.
See the post I did for Opium.
http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/2007/04/bottle-that-inspired-opium.html
What do you think about their story... and the fragrance of Mury?
On the face of it, I think that Dinand's design is pretty close to the Mury bottle, but also to certain types of inros, so it would be hard to decide whether or not the Mury flacon influenced him first. Opium is a faithful copy of a grooved inro and that style is very standardized. On the other hand, I also think that creation in perfumery tends to be very derivative, so I would not be surprised that they drew inspiration from the Mury flacon if they use for instance des cahiers de styles with old ads. Now, how to bring a proof positive of that is the whole question. If you ask them directly, maybe they would just say, yes, that they looked at the Mury flacon too, together with inros. Do you know who the manufacturers are for the Mury flacon and the Opium one?
I don't intend to prove anything. Just to show that beside the "official" marketing story (where the main goal is at the end to sell not to tell the truth as scientists or historians would do) there are always something else. Is up to the reader to decide how close an old bottle (from a fashionable house of the 20's) is or not to Opium. The glass maker... you would be very surprised to know. :)))
I love your secrets:) I look forward to reading your publications:)