Poison (1985)
by Christian Dior

This complex potion invokes long lost memories of my younger years. My great aunt used to wear this as her signature, she always had a bottle near her boudoir mirror and it radiated from her whenever she hugged me. My Mum allegedly wore it in the 90s too. I'm male, and now 22.
This is the first and only perfume that gains me numerous compliments on how I smell. My first time wearing this the other month, a 40-year-old colleague said I "took her back years" and said that I smelt amazing. From then on I knew it was special. I've had numerous comments since then. One friend at the pub said I smelt "delicious". A male customer in his 50s said I smelt like his wife and yet, despite my blushed face, I didn't care.
My first bottle was a full 100ml vintage (batch code 1E102) and none of the vintages I've purchased have smelt as good as it is. I don't know why. All have varying batch codes; and all have their differences, probably due to ageing or how they've been stored. I truly believe Poison can age like fine wine. That 100ml bottle may be slightly turned, as the liquid can appear almost greenish on my skin, but it smells insane. The animalic musk and witchy incense has aged into an intoxicating honeyed plum juice, that lasts and lasts.

Vintage Poison can fill a room and I'll forever be shocked it's an EDT. It can wear you and it has been known to announce my presence before I've even entered a room, or after. It's that powerful. It has nuclear sillage and longevity, and to me, is the reigning queen of tuberose and the sole goddess of the olfactory world. Embodying the mystique of the evil witch from Snow White, it is the best perfume ever made. Purple velvet drapes. Seduction. Nothing comes close to it.
Warm spices intertwined with a cloud of stewed plums, tuberose, laced with dark wild berries, lavished in ambery honey. The drydown is very animalic and carnal to me. My skin "eats" perfume, but Poison lasts the longest of all the perfumes I've ever tried. Strong, heady projection for at least 8 hours. Yet, I can still detect the dark, animalic musky traces of it on my wrist almost 24 hours later, even after a shower. My attraction to it is not just for the beautiful scent but also its infamous history and enchanting concept. If not for those things, then for its intriguing name. Everyone wore it, it was banned from restaurants, it had a huge global release. The 80s is my favourite era, and this fragrance expertly reflects that decade.
Big, bold, daring, powerful.
Poison is an alchemic masterpiece, a classic of its own fairytale, Dior's magnum opus, an icon, and a legendary symbol of the decade it was birthed.

I have smelled some of the current formulations. One which I presume is from either 2006 or 2016 (batch code: 6P01), with gold accents on the box packaging. It does not last like the vintage. Less spicy, less potent, less incense, but is still a nice plummy potion. Fuck the IFRA and Dior for what they've done to it.
Back in March, I purchased a 50ml bottle from Boots, I presume with the latest reformulation. I've never purchased Poison in an official retailer before. I don't know if it was a dud batch or if it really is what Poison is in 2019, but it smelt disgusting. A spiking coriander note, that just smelt off. Nothing like Poison. I ended up selling it on eBay.
I own several bottles of the vintage EDT, all varying volumes. I have the Esprit de Parfum in a 30ml dropper and a very rare 100ml spray tester bottle of it too. I'll soon be adding the Eau de Cologne to my collection.

I can't really be objective about Poison, as it's attached to a lot of nostalgia for me. The first bottle I acquired of it was in 1986, as a teenager. I wore it almost every day for 2 years. It's what people came to associate with me (and according to old classmates, it still does remind them of me.) At the time, I was the sole girl at my school who wore it (or the later knockoffs), and it was a strange, dark, daring scent which fit my strange-girl personality. I even had a cat who adored it, and would lick it off my wrists (my mother checked with the vet to be reassured that the amounts she'd be ingesting wouldn't hurt her); this memory is bittersweet, given the brevity of cat lifespans.

On me it was thankfully never "too much" according to everyone who smelled it on me (I applied exactly one spray, which might have had something to do with that), and it smelled mostly of its fruit and spice notes. Even after it became an ubiquitous, abused and overused fragrance, I was told that it was still somehow distinctive -- and therefore not annoying -- on me.

Not long ago, I opened a box that had been stored at my parents's house and found a full bottle that had been bought in 1993, according to the serial number. 25 years later, the bottle smells exactly how I recall it; one spray provoked a rush of memories in a way the newer formulas don't, which is rather curious.

So yes, Poison, for me, is and will always be a 5-star scent.

Poison is not my jam: it's thick, sweet, spicy, but most of all: heavy. The flowers are heady and heavy, the spices are suspended in a thick ooze of amber, the vanilla is rich and heavy, there's a slightly tart, plummy note, but even that is heavy. The whole fragrance is like someone playing a piece of music hitting every note with the same ferocious intensity; monotonically overwhelming. It does have a gothic appeal though, so I do get why some people may love it, but I'll happily leave it to them to pull this off.

The opening of Poison was challenging for me, and seemed more feminine than unisex, but within an hour it settled into an agreeable dryer sheet smell.

The original EdT.Poison from Christian Dior Paris had smell so good,strongly. But now smell changed. It has orange smell when dry down.