Sarah Baker Archives - The Perfume Society

Sarah Baker Parfums – Extrait, Extrait, read all about it!

Sarah Baker Parfums are ramping up the ravishing longevity by adding Extrait to their collection; read all about their turned-up-to-eleven appeal, find out how to try sample-sizes and feast your nose on full-size fragrances, here…

Who is Sarah Baker?

Contemporary artist Sarah Baker’s photography, sculpture and films are inspired by ‘fashion, luxury and celebrity’, but little did she know that when she created a fictional fragrance house as part of her artwork, her passion for the project (and the public’s reaction to it) would result in a real-life fragrance house. Still very much artistically inspired, luckily for us they’re now ready to (actually) wear… and these intensified, ultra-long-lasting versions of the scents are even more voluptuously desirable!

What do they smell like?

‘Why be a star when you can be a legend?’ asks the always artistic, eternally glamorous Sarah Baker, introducing perfumer Chris Maurice’s enticing composition for her house. Balancing bergamot’s brightness with the honeyed headiness of orange blossom, petitgrain pierces through the sweet swirl of butterscotch and dusting of sinfully dark chocolate. Cradled in Laos oudh, Suyufi agarwood and amber, it’s the ’24 Karat glow’ of celebrity’s golden age, made manifest.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

This is a classic of the collection that’s been adored since the scents were first launched. Sarah Baker, the nose for this one, is better known as the founder of quirky British house 4160 Tuesdays, but here collaborated with Baker to compose this marvel. Picture it: A fire is roaring in the library. You savour a rare single malt. Warmth and heritage envelope you after a walk through mossy ruins in Scotland’s Highlands. Autumnal.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

Oh now this is completely addictive, we warn you… One to wear when you simply want to smell irresistible – we’ve heard tell of several glossy mag beauty editors who cannot be without this having tried it on their own skin, and having sampled it ourselves, we totally understand why. Playful and sweet with the flavours of childhood appetites, it dries down to something seriously grown-up. A beloved game encountered in the attic, realising years later it was the seed of your adult prowess; the sensual, sexy and clever you.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

Another from the original collection we fell in lust with at first sniff, this swaggers with glamour, it’s that ‘shoulder pads in a bottle’ scent which we all need sometimes for an instant spritz of confidence. It evokes the strength within, a purr of suggestiveness, a soap-opera bottled that could get out of control if you allow. An epic night out. Heady excess and a whiff of scandal. A big cat signifying power and the right to luxury. The only choice when good behaviour is not an option. Decadent.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

Jungle Jezebel

Now this one will surround you in a shield of perfumed protection, but in the most audaciously fabulous way. Too much or not enough? We think it’s the perfect perfume to wear when you need to let your inner diva take the steering wheel and drive you to beyond the limits of your own imagination. Inspired by cult star Divine. A bubblegum mélange of tropical fruits, seductive flowers and predatory tones. A scandalous first impression unveils a balance of audacious combinations. Dare to walk your own path.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

This may well have been the first fragrance we ever smelled from this incredible niche house. Having just launched, we were blown away by the freshness, both of this breezey scent (which wafts the promise of holidays and happiness) and the inventiveness of their collection. Here, fragrance floods Aegean isles, turning fresh on crystal waters. A yacht where a famous affair plays out above and below decks.The sun glistens on your body. A drama that remains fresh forever.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

What a scent, oh boy, you’d better be ready to fall headlong for the lustful trio of tuberose, honey and ylang ylang. It’s fragrances like this that linger so longingly on the skin – like the tingle of a passionate kiss that seemingly last forever in this strength. One to waft when you desire others to follow your trail for hours, unbidden, helplessly seeking another sniff. Ah yes. Cross and double-cross. Who’s fooling who when the stakes are high? A lingering vapour of classic silver screen sophistication. Impeccable.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

There are occasions that a scent rises above a smell and becomes a texture, a colour, a shimmering sensation that evokes so much and plunges you into an olfactive memory. Here, we find ourselves half dreaming, half remembering, waves kissing our legs, warm sun caressing the skin, a feeling of nakedness that sighs contentedly. In a mythical ocean, a sea shell gives birth to the goddess of love. Desire lingers beneath the shimmering surface. Fresh and beautiful, with an undertow. Salty.

£145 for 50ml extrait de parfum

How can you try samples?

We’re thrilled to be able to offer you a way to try these fabulous new extraits altogether – so you don’t have to choose between them, giving each a chance to drape itself irresistibly over your skin and radiate ravishingly in turn. Only then can you truly decide which one(s) must be yours…

Sarah Baker Extraits Discovery Set £45 for 8 x 2ml extrait de parfum

Written by: Suzy Nightingale

Get to Know… Sarah Baker perfumes (now available in our shop!)

Contemporary artist Sarah Baker’s photography, sculpture and films are inspired by ‘fashion, luxury and celebrity’, but little did she know that when she created a fictional fragrance house as part of her artwork, her passion for the project (and the public’s reaction to it) would result in a real-life fragrance house. Still artistically inspired, luckily for us they’re now ready to (actually) wear…

When we speak to founders of fragrance houses, we’re used to hearing them rhapsodise about their childhood memories of exploring their mother’s scents on the dressing table and how they discovered the world (and themselves) through smell, but Sarah Baker chuckles as she recalls growing up avoiding perfume, because for years, ‘I convinced myself I was actually allergic to it, because my sister wore so much of it and I’d be stuck in the car with her on long journeys!’ This early olfactory over-exposure luckily didn’t put her off perfume for life, and teenage Sarah became ‘obsessed’ with The Body Shop’s White musk. ‘My friend Alice and I had a ritual of going to the Body Shop,’ she says, ‘and dousing ourselves with it. I swear it bonded us. I smell it now and think of all the fun times, like sleepovers, laughing together…’

Gaining a place at Goldsmith’s College, in 2000 Sarah moved from America to live and study in London. The overt opulence and heady glamour of 1980’s movies, soap operas, music and swaggering fashion styles inspired Sarah’s artwork and still very much inspire her today. This maximalist (and Fun with a capital F) ethos inspires her love of fragrance too. The first joining of the artistic and fragrant dots, as it were, occurring when Sarah created a film inspired by the life of Patrizia Reggiani (who was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her husband, the fashion world figure Maurizio Gucci).

‘I’m really interested in exploring soap operas in my work and here was a real life one.’ For the project, Sarah invented a fashion company that she named ‘Imperio Rosso’, and, with help from the Arts Council, in 2014 made a deliberately hyperbolic film for the Institute of Art and Olfaction about her fictional fashion moguls’ passionate, fashion and perfume-obsessed lives. It was during the making of the movie that Sarah finally realised she wanted ‘…to enter into the world of commerce and create an actual, real-life scent brand.’ Having become ‘really interested in celebrity perfumes – what are you buying into when you purchase them’, a line of scents ‘based on my love of luxury fabrics’ was the perfect fit.

Collaborating with other creatives at the top of their game really seems to light Sarah Baker’s fire, so the first collection in 2016 found her working with perfumer Ashley Eden Kessler (who’d originally made the fragrances for the exhibition), and 4160 Tuesday’s perfumer Sarah McCartney. In 2018, Sarah collaborated with fragrance writer Miguel Matos for a limited edition scent called Jungle Jezebel – a limited edition design concept that saw the bottle adorned with drag queen-esque eyelashes. But Sarah’s artistic/fashion dreams really took flight when working with the legendary Donatella Versace and supermodel Helena Christensen as part of the most 80s-tastic spectacular campaign you’re likely to see, for a Jackie Collins-inspired coffee table book entitled Baroness, with Donatella guest-editing the issue and styling the interiors and clothes featured within…

We know you’ve been adoring the samples we’ve included from Sarah Baker in our Discovery Boxes, but now we are thrilled to be able to offer you full sizes to purchase in our shop! Which of them have you fallen for…?

Written by Suzy Nightingale

Helping Hands: fragrance houses producing hand sanitisers

Due to the current global pandemic of the Covid-19 virus, many fragrance houses are turning their production of perfume to that of hand-santisers, which are much-needed and now often difficult to obtain for health workers and those at risk.

All medical advice still clearly states that washing your hands with soap and water for twenty seconds or more is still the best way to ensure your hands are properly clean – but in situations when soap and water are not easily used, and as an extra precaution, the supply and delivery of hand-santisers to those in need is now more important than ever.

Hand-santisers should ideally contain 70% professional grade alcohol base to be effective, and most over the counter hand sanitisers contain varying amounts and types, often between 60% and 95% and usually isopropyl alcohol.

Because alcohol is used as the base of the majority of fragrances, fragrance houses have to pre-order this in bulk, and so it makes perfect sense for them to be using their stocks of this material – once taken foregranted, and now a precious commodity – to turn it into hand-santisers.

It turns out that all Dior, Givenchy, and Guerlain liquid soaps and creams have a viscosity very similar to that of hand-sanitiser gel, which means LVMH is able to continue using their usual filling machines, plastic bottles, and pump dispensers to mass-produce hand-santiser, which they have been distributing free of charge to French health authorities and hospitals.

Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH, said that ‘Through this initiative, LVMH intends to help address the risk of a lack of product in France and enable a greater number of people to continue to take the right action to protect themselves from the spread of the virus.’ And they have been highlighting the work they’re doing on social media with the hashtag #LVMHJOINSFORCES.

Sarah Baker has made gorgeously scented hand-santisers available to the public, that conform to the WHO recommended hand-rub formulations. Named ‘Jazz Hands‘, a set of four long-lasting 50ml bottles, fragranced with her perfumes Greek Keys, Charade, Jungle Juice and Atlante, can be purchased for £40. The price includes a £5 donation to Médecins Sans Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders), and Sarah will send all those who purchase a pack of Jazz Hands a special discount code, allowing you to take the full price of the hand-santisers off a 50ml bottle of perfume of your choice.

Ormonde Jayne started making batches of hand-santiser several weeks ago, gifting them to all their employees and families, and are now giving away a free spray bottle of hand-santiser with any purchase from their website. Founder Linda Pilkington commented that, ‘As a privately owned perfume house that manufactures its own perfume, we are in a unique position, having a denatured alcohol license, to be able to manufacture a hand sanitiser. Our formula contains 80% denatured alcohol, 20% aniseptic aloe vera and tea tree oil.’ And she continued, ‘On behalf of all the Ormonde Jayne team, we wish you all the most important things in life, good health and happiness.’

In America, other indie brands are stepping forward, including L.A-based perfumer Sarah Horowitz , who has introduced the Stay Safe Sanitizing Spray ($10 for a 1-ounce bottle or a free 0.34-ounce bottle with every online order over $75. The spray consists of an 80% concentrate of organic alcohol, which isl mixed with essential oils often used for their antibacterial properties, such as clove, lemongrass, lavender maillette and patchouli.

Last week we also reported that fragrance house Miller Harris were donating their entire stock of soap and hand wash to AGE UK and other vulnerable communities, and enouraging other brands to help if they are able.

How heartening, at times of crisis, that fragrance houses have stepped up so swiftly to help and do what what they can – we’re all in this together, after all.

By Suzy Nightingale

Versace’s Holiday saga: Sarah Baker’s glam-azing project

Multi-media artist and perfume-house founder, Sarah Baker, has collaborated with none other than Donatella Versace and supermodel Helena Christensen as part of the most 80s-tastic spectacular campaign you’re likely to see this season.

Dripping with decadence, every aspect of the project exudes the kind of soft-focus glamour Baker’s artistic endeavours are known for – from the fashion and art magazine, a six-part Jackie Collins-esque romantic saga through to the drop-dead gorgeous photography.

We first met Sarah Baker through her innovative, often tongue in cheek (and always provocative) series of short films (scroll down), photography and performances that explore the seemingly luxurious worlds of celebrity, fashion and fragrance through a Vaseline-smeared filter that has long been inspired by her passion for romantic novels and soap opera storylines. Baker was so inspired by scent, in fact, that she went on to make her previously fictional fragrance brand a reality – launching a fascinating collection of fragrances she created in collaboration with niche perfumers.

Central to this new Versace project is Baroness – the second issue of the British fashion and art magazine, founded by art and creative director Matthew Holroyd and Dazed & Confused editor in chief Isabella Burley, with this issue written by Baker and guest edited by Donatella Versace. It’s available to order online (click the link) and at all Versace flagship boutiques.

Baker and Helena Christensen, lavishly dressed head-to-toe in Versace (obvs), then feature as the main protagonists of the six-part Versace’s Holiday Saga, a series of short films which veritably bristle with glitzy scandals and opulent intrigue, following protagonists Angelina and the Baroness (played respectively by Baker and Christensen), ‘as they navigate tumultuous affairs and overcome adversities.’ Sounds like the average festive family get-together, right? Well perhaps, but with added blackmail letters, a pop song called Spritz Me With Your Love, and the glamour turned up to eleven, dah-ling! Watch the glam-azing trailer below…

(Then head to versace.com, to read the story and binge-watch them all.)

Says Sarah: ‘It was incredibly rewarding for me to work with Donatella Versace and Baroness Magazine. I have so much creative inspiration for the future of Sarah Baker Perfumes and my own art practice — I’m eternally grateful to continue to work in both worlds.’

A while ago we interviewed Sarah at her studio to delve into her personal scent collection for our #ShareMyStash feature in The Scented Letter Magazine, and she told us many Top Secret projects were brewing – but we had no idea quite how thrilling they would be!

If your penchant for glamour evoked in a frivolous, fun way has been tickled, why not check out the trailer for the short film that began Baker’s love affair with fragrance, below?

And if your sybaritic nature really needs feeding, we suggest you head to Sarah Baker Perfumes to further indulge your senses…

By Suzy Nightingale

Sarah Baker fuses art, film & fragrance in a decadent soap opera feast for the senses. Watch the film and smell the perfumes…

London-based artist Sarah Baker is fascinated in the cult of celebrity, depictions of glamour and the extravagent shoulder-pads-at-dawn dramas played out in American soap operas. Though Baker’s career has thus far mainly revolved around making her own films, in to this heady mix of art and film she wanted to weave another layer of storytelling – this time through the medium of scent.
Working with the prestigious Institute of Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles, Sarah Baker began to develop her own perfume line, collaborating with renowned perfumers, with Baker overseeing production from her East London Studio and the four fragrances finally launching at a decadent art show/party in December. Says Baker, ‘Each perfume is inspired by luxurious fashion motifs that evoke lavish scenes; while gazing at the printed bottles and smelling the perfumes, one could, for instance, be instantaneously transported onto the deck of a yacht in the Mediterranean….’
Sarah Baker Perfumes take us on a journey from the fizzing ozonic freshness of grapefruit and hedoine’s cooling breeze in Greek Keys, to the frankincense, florals and castoreum ferocious animalic growl (underpinned by fuzzy fur) in Leopard. Taking a softer turn, we have milky musk, coconut, vanilla and an ambrox sexiness of bare skin glimpsed in Lace; finishing with the full-on smokiness of open fires, heather-strewn hills, leather, hops and tobacco of Tartan. An eclectic and genuinely evocative collection, the Greek Keys and Leopard were made by perfumer Ashley Eden Kessler; Lace and Tartan by 4160 Tuesdays very own Sarah McCartney. At once enlivening, challenging and comforting – they are all a true feast for the senses.
Sarah Baker Perfumes are currently £60 for 50ml eau de parfum, and available at sarahbakerperfumes.com
The worlds of film, fashion and fragrance are set to collide this Saturday, with the showing of Baker’s 2013 film Impirioso – the story of a wealth and fame obsessed fashion heiress who murders her husband when he sells the family fashion business, in the style of an ultra-glam 80s mini tv series.
And vital news for fragrance fanatics – you’ll be able to smell all the perfumes following the film. Sarah Baker explains that, in fact, ‘…Impirioso is actually the artwork which inspired me to make perfumes. It’s not about perfumes at all, it’s about a woman who murders her husband (based on Patrizia Reggiani) . Instead of using Gucci documentary/biopic-style I created a fake fashion brand “Rocco Rosso” and with it the logo and costumes, hats, home wares. It inspired me to finally make a real product, I had always wanted to produce a perfume, and that’s when I started working with Saskia from Institute for Art and Olfaction.’
You can watch the trailer for the film by clicking here…
After the screening you’ll be guided across the road to Storefront – the installation where Baker’s perfumes are displayed, for smelling, wine and chats. It all sounds gloriously glamorous, and, even better – tickets for Impirioso are FREE, but booking is required.
The Hat Factory Arts Centre, Luton
Saturday 14 January
4.30pm
Trains run regularly from St Pancras Station and it’s a 1 min walk to the screening from Luton Station.
Written by Suzy Nightingale