Omo

Inspired by B Opium is Luxe Fragrances' version of Yves Saint Laurent's Black Opium, the 2014 release that reinvented the coffee-gourmand genre, built on pear, pink pepper and orange blossom over a coffee-jasmine-bitter almond-licorice heart, resting on vanilla, patchouli, cashmere wood and cedar. Omo's own listing describes a blend of black coffee, white florals and vanilla, and the dupe opens with a soft pear-pink pepper-orange blossom lift before the coffee-jasmine heart takes over, closing on vanilla, cashmere wood and cedar. The coffee-vanilla combination is the easiest part of Black Opium to recognise and Omo delivers it convincingly from the first minute, reading unmistakably as the same sweet, dark gourmand genre. What thins out is the licorice and patchouli that give the real Black Opium its slightly boozy, almost bitter undertone alongside the sweetness - Omo's version is more straightforwardly vanilla-sweet and less complex by comparison, without the darker edge that keeps the original from feeling purely like dessert. Performance runs three to five hours with decent initial projection, shorter than the eight-to-ten-hour staying power widely reported for the designer original. A satisfying, bold coffee-vanilla gourmand for evening and date wear, at the cost of some of Black Opium's darker complexity.