Opium (perfume)

Opium is an Oriental-spicyperfume created for fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) by perfumer Jean Amic and Jean-Louis Sieuzac of Roure, first marketed in 1977. Its top notes are a mixture of fruit and spices, with mandarin orange,plum, clove, coriander and pepper, as well as bay leaf. Its floral middle notes consist predominantly jasmine, rose and Lily of the Valley, in addition to carnation, cinnamon, peach and orris root. It is underlined by the sweet woody base note containing sandalwood, cedarwood, myrrh, opopanax, labdanum, benzoin and castoreum, in addition to amber, incense, musk, patchouli, tolu and vetiver.

Naming and theme

Opium caused a stir with its controversial name and brought accusations that brand designer Yves Saint Laurent was condoning drug use. In the United States, a group of Chinese Americans demanded a change of the name and a public apology from Saint Laurent for "his insensitivity to Chinese history and Chinese American concerns." They formed a committee called the American Coalition Against Opium and Drug Abuse, which expressed outrage at the choice of a name representing "a menace that destroyed many lives in China." But such controversies rather helped the perfume to be well-publicized, which soon became a best-selling scent. For its launch party in 1977, a tall ship Peking was rented from the South Street Seaport Museum in New York's East Harbor, and writer Truman Capote sat at the helm of the ship at the party. The ship was draped with banners of gold, red, and purple, and the Oriental theme was displayed with a 1,000-pound (450 kg) bronze statue of the Buddha, decorated with white cattleya orchids. YSL carried the Oriental theme into its packaging design as well—the red plastic container holding the perfume's glass vial, designed by Pierre Dinand, was inspired by inro (印籠, いんろう), the small Japanese lacquered cases that were worn under kimonos and held perfumes, herbs and medicines.

Opium

Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium latex contains approximately 12% of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off, and dehydrated. The word "meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to infant stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies.

The production of opium itself has not changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine, has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semisynthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum.

Opium (disambiguation)

Opium is a plant latex that is a source of narcotic analgesic drugs

Opium may also refer to:

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Opium (Serebro song)

Опиум (Opioom (or Opium in English)) is the third released single by Russian girl band Serebro. Given to its order of release, the song is nicknamed "Song #3" after its predecessors "Song #1" and "Song #2" (Дыши). This is the fourth song to be made public from Serebro's upcoming album after "What's Your Problem?" was performed at the RMA on 4 October 2007.

Debut

On 13 March 2008 Serebro announced on their official website that they will be releasing their third (official) single "Опиум". The site says that the song premiered on a Russian morning radio show 'BrigadaU' on Europa Plus radio and that until 17 March Europa Plus had exclusive rights to play the song.

The song Опиум is available to download for free (as are other serebro songs) on the official Serebro website.

On 2 May 2008 Serebro announced on their official website that the new music video of Opium will debut on MUV-TV, 7 May 2008. They also mention that this date is the day after their producer's (Maxim Fadeev) birthday.

Perfume

Perfume (UK /ˈpɜːr.fjuːm/ US /pərˈfjuːm/; French: parfum) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds, fixatives and solvents - used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces "a pleasant scent".

Ancient texts and archaeological excavations show the use of perfumes in some of the earliest human civilizations. Modern perfumery began in the late 19th century with the commercial synthesis of aroma compounds such as vanillin or coumarin, which allowed for the composition of perfumes with smells previously unattainable solely from natural aromatics alone.

History

The word perfume derives from the Latin perfumare, meaning "to smoke through". Perfumery, as the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, and was further refined by the Romans and Persians.

The world's first-recorded chemist is considered a woman named Tapputi, a perfume maker mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. She distilled flowers, oil, and calamus with other aromatics, then filtered and put them back in the still several times. In India, perfume and perfumery existed in the Indus civilization (3300 BC – 1300 BC). One of the earliest distillations of Ittar was mentioned in the Hindu Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita.

Perfume (Japanese band)

Perfume (パフューム, Pafyūmu) is a Japanese pop girl group from Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, consisting of Ayano Ōmoto ("Nocchi"), Yuka Kashino ("Kashiyuka"), and Ayaka Nishiwaki ("A~chan"). The group has been signed with Amuse, Inc. since 2003 and with Universal Music Japan since 2012.

The group was formed in early 2000 inside young talent academy Actors School Hiroshima, and debuted with their first Hiroshima-local single "Omajinai Perori" released on March 21, 2002. A year later they moved to Tokyo, started to work with Capsule's producer Yasutaka Nakata and released their first nationwide indie single, "Sweet Donuts" on August 6, 2003. In 2005 they got a major contract deal with Tokuma Japan Communications, and released their major debut single "Linear Motor Girl" on September 21. However, it was not until 2008 where the group's seventh single "Polyrhythm", which was chosen to be the theme song of a recycle campaign by NHK, that they started to receive major attention in Japan. The single peaked at number seven on the Oricon charts, becoming their first Top 10 single in Japan, and since then, all of their subsequent works starting with their eighth single "Baby Cruising Love" have debuted within the Top 3 of the charts. Their first original studio album, Game, released on April 16, 2008, became their first number one album in Japan, and "Love the World", released on July 9, 2008, their first number one single. With roughly combined sales of both singles and albums, the group has sold over 3 million records, with 1.5 million albums sold in Japan alone as of March 2012.

Perfume (disambiguation)

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give a pleasant smell.

Perfume may also refer to:

Music

Songs and albums

Other uses