The message of Belle d’Opium is explicit: ‘o/Opium is beautiful,’ it proclaims; ‘the young woman on the poster is beautiful as a consequence of o/Opium use.’ This is false advertising of the most depraved kind. This poster reveals an industry disdainfully believing it occupies a charmed space beyond the constraints of... responsibility, accountability, or morality, ‘whatever sells’, its only code.

When I walked into a store last week I was confronted by a striking large poster advertisement. It was of a languid young woman sexily dressed and dripping gold jewellery—gorgeously decadent, even to the dark rings under her eyes. I knew instantly I was looking into the eyes of a drug addict, or a model made up to look like one, an intuition confirmed by the poster title beneath: Belle d’Opium. Given the picture and the very name of the perfume‘ it would seem that Yves St Laurent is blurring scent and drug in this advertisement in order to glamorize his perfume through the ‘glamour’ of drug addiction: ‘this young woman’s beauty derives from her use of o/Opium’; ‘o/Opium is a source of beauty in life.’ It is tantamount to saying ‘It’s cool to be an addict; it’s glamorous to be an addict.’