Opium Pour Homme

Star anise opens Opium Pour Homme with a cold, liquorice-like bite, black currant adding a tart fruitiness right alongside it, an odd but effective pairing for a cold-weather fragrance. Pepper and galanga keep the spice sharp through the heart, galanga in particular giving it a slightly warm, gingery bite well before any sweetness shows up.

The base is the real reason to wear this one in winter. Bourbon vanilla brings a rich, boozy sweetness, tolu balsam adds a dense, resinous warmth, and atlas cedar gives it a dry, woody backbone under all that vanilla and balsam, a splintery structure against the sweetness. This drydown is where Opium Pour Homme spends most of its life, warm, spiced and amber-heavy, closer to mulled wine left out to cool than to a typical fresh masculine, and it holds that shape for a long while, the anise from the opening barely a memory by then.

Its presence stays modest for a fragrance this rich, noticed most by people standing close rather than announcing itself to everyone nearby. Wear it in the cold months, at night, somewhere the sweetness and spice have room to unfold without competing with warm weather. Fans of dry, ambery orientals built around real spice will find a lot to like once the vanilla and cedar settle in.

Smells similar

We matched these by the notes each one lists, giving more weight to the unusual ones they share. Sharing materials does not make one a copy of the other.

Dua describes Impulse as inspired by Opium Pour Homme:

“our version of Opium Pour Homme by Yves Saint Laurent, and”

More from Yves Saint Laurent