Sarah Baker, photo courtesy of Sarah Baker Perfumes

Artist, thinker, perfumer, challenger of the staid, Sarah Baker throws down the gauntlet before the ordinary with panache. Baker references a wide range of influences ranging from the luxury fashion materials of her Motif collection to French surrealist cinema and Old Hollywood. Her perfumes are bold, glamourous, and memorable, and every fragrance wardrobe needs perfumes that allow their wearer to inhabit different personae. I’ve raved about Flame & Fortune, Loudo, and last year’s Gold Spot – each is sensual, gorgeous, and wonderfully addictive.

Sarah Baker and Flame & Fortune collage by Michelyn

Sarah Baker Perfumes Flame & Fortune (Sarah Baker): If you’ve ever fantasized about being a mouthy dame in trouble or a world-weary private eye with a past, Flame and Fortune is your gal. A pulp fiction-inspired bombshell, Sarah Baker Perfumes Flame & Fortune puts you in a 40’s back alley at night where a jazz sax wails mournfully from a nearby club and danger and sex hang in the air like perfume. After an explosion of creamy, heady tuberose and orange blossom, there’s a big squeeze of mandarin juice with a chaser of tequila. Streaks of motor oil from the black sedan that just went screeching into the night rise from the asphalt. Then there’s the bite of ginger and fruity pink pepper, some sweaty labdanum and this baby is pure trouble.

This is not a fragrance for the office. Save it for when you want to channel your inner Noir antihero or  gun-toting moll, Flame and Fortune is your gal.

Notes: Orange blossom, pink pepper, apricot, ginger, mandarin petigrain, lily of the valley, iris, jasmine, tuberose, motor oil, burnt wood, labdanum, fire, mezcal.

Sarah Baker and Loudo collage by Michelyn

Sarah Baker Perfumes Loudo (Chris Maurice): Loudo, one of a trio of oud-centric fragrances including Symmetry and Gold Spot, is inspired by childhood play and, as Baker describes, “how it deeply shapes our ability to understand and use conceptual and abstract thinking.”

Sarah Baker Perfumes Loudo opens with bright bergamot and petitgrain, setting the stage for the complex Laos oud that is the perfume’s centerpiece. There’s a distinct smell of old, cracked wood dominating the early stages of Loudo, like the redolence of an old chair after being brought down from the attic. Later, oud’s characteristic aspects manifest; the medicinal, wet Band-Aid odor merging with smoked pipe tobacco, burned cherry wood and fresh mulch. But what is particularly wonderful about Loudo is the way Maurice contrasts the refined oud-agarwood accord with classic childhood sweets – in particular, with cherry, vanilla and white chocolate. These notes hopscotch alongside the burnished, very grown-up oud and agarwood accord in the heart, adding a frolicsome touch but never pushing the composition into dessert territory. It’s a quirky, delicious marriage of sophisticated and playful, and one of my favourites of the line.

Notes: Bergamot, neroli, petitgrain, black cherry, cypriol, orange blossom, white chocolate, Laos oud, Suyufi agarwood, musk, amber, vanilla.

Sarah Baker and Gold Spot collage by Michelyn

Sarah Baker Perfumes Gold Spot (Chris Maurice): Sultry, cozy, Gold Spot is simply gorgeous – a purring angora of a fragrance with the sensual glow of a George Hurrell photograph and the most approachably delicious thing I sampled in 2022. Baker explains that Gold Spot is intended as Loudo’s gilded sister: “With Gold Spot, we asked Chris to dip Loudo in gold. The vibe is hedonistically indulgent, which is how I imagine the era of the Golden Age of Hollywood when everything was dripping in gold; the sets, the talent and the screenplays.” Like Loudo and Symmetry, Maurice centers the composition around a blend of orange blossom, cypriol, natural Laotian oud, and a Suyufi agarwood tincture he made himself. Like, Loudo, Gold Spot leans gourmand. Nutty, toasty butterscotch, dark chocolate, and the dry, cracked wood aroma of agar merge with the custardy smell of baked vanilla. it’s an olfactory version of biting into one of those deliciously complex Parisian pastries that layer flavours and textures, a voluptuous parfait. Cutting into all that toothsomeness are slivers of bergamot and petitgrain, which bring some bright, bitter fruit for balance. The agarwood and oud come into their own in the heart of the composition, adding a sturdy base around which the gourmand notes swirl like poured cream.

I absolutely adore Gold Spot: like Loudo, it has become one of my go-to cold weather perfumes. It is so delicious it makes me want to close my eyes and imagine I’m being fed butterscotch parfait on a golden spoon by Charles Boyer.

Notes: bergamot, petitgrain, cypriol, orange blossom, butterscotch, Laos oud, Suyufi agarwood, dark chocolate, sweet myrrh, musk, amber, vanilla.

If you don’t have any of these sultry Sarah Baker Perfumes in your wardrobe, order some samples and see what all the fuss is about. I promise you won’t be bored.

Disclaimer: Samples of Sarah Baker Perfumes Flame and Fortune, Loudo, and Gold Spot generously provided by Sarah Baker. My opinions, as always, are my own.

Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor

Thanks to the generosity of Sarah Baker we have a draw for a 50 ml bottle of either Flame & Fortune, Loudo or Gold Spot for one one registered reader in the U.S., UK or EU only. To be eligible, please leave a comment about what strikes you in Lauryn’s reviews of the Sarah Baker Perfumes Three You Should Be Wearing, where you live, and which fragrance featured is the one you would choose. Draw closes January 1/31/2023.

Editor’s Note: Lauryn awarded Gold Spot a 2022 Best of Scent, Loudo is a Best of 2021 also from Lauryn, and Flame & Fortune is a Best of Scent 2020 from Nicoleta

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