The Devil Wears Prada Actress Emily Blunt, signs on as the face of Yves Saint Laurent Opium, only to think they should’ve given the job to someone a little less “un-French”…
Emily Blunt agreed to become the face and ambassadress for Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium fragrance because fragrances “evoke” so many memories for people.
The ‘Devil Wears Prada’ actress will star in the new TV and print campaigns for the “evocative” scent – which was created by perfumer Jean-Louis Sieuzac in 1977 – and Emily revealed she loves fragrances because scent is so important to her.
She explained to People: “I think really that’s what I love most about it – it evokes so much for people. Everyone always says they’ve smelled something, and remember this beautiful memory they experienced maybe many years ago. There’s something very powerful about it.”
Emily’s new advertising campaign for the brand – where she plays a woman on the hunt for the Opium fragrance – will air in December and Emily revealed she was thrilled to play a role rather than simply pose with the product. She said: “It was thrilling. I was given a story to play, and for me as an actress that’s very exciting. I’m not just posing or just trying to sell something.”
Speaking about the perfume previously she said: “”It is a really exciting experience to embody this legendary fragrance, which has stood the test of time without its allure ever being diminished. Being a part of this new campaign and being able to tell the story of this very evocative fragrance is a real thrill.”
Renaud de Lesquen, president of YSL & Designer Brands, explained the new campaign will portray “a fiery, almost reckless woman with magnetic seduction, that nobody or nothing can resist. Opium embraces the whole history and values of our house.”
However after starring in the ad, Emily Blunt thinks Yves Saint Laurent “made a mistake” hiring her to front the campaign.
The ‘Muppets’ actress can’t understand why the fashion house asked her to star in a campaign for their Opium fragrance – which saw her dodging a leopard while wearing towering high-heeled shoes – because she looks “so un-French”.
She said: “God, I’m so un-French in that trailer.” Asked why she was invited to front the campaign, she added: “I don’t know. I’ve no idea. Perhaps there was no one else? They made a mistake, a terrible mistake.”
Despite her reservations, Emily admitted she finally said yes to the campaign after years of turning down beauty advertisement offers because she liked the “aura of scandal”.
She said: “I think that I’ve been wanting to make sure that when I did it would be the right thing. There’s such an aura of scandal around this perfume that I was quite attached to the idea of doing it from the word go. I’d been asked to do a couple of things but none were as classy as this. And I got to work with a leopard.?”
The ‘Devil Wears Prada’ star also revealed she wanted to wear a flowing gown instead of a tuxedo in the advert, but was advised it would send the leopard “crazy”.
She told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: “I got word back that the leopard trainer says, ‘If you have flowing fabric around the leopard the leopard will go crazy…’ So I said yes to the tux.”
