Montana James Thomas lives and works in NYC. He is the author of the poetry chapbook, POMERANIAN and the full length poetry collection Concerning the Dinner. He previously co-hosted the fragrance podcast, Top Notes. His column about smell, The Stink, is published through Byline. He currently co-hosts the monthly reading series Straight Girls at KGB Red Room.
"Choosing a favorite Sarah Baker fragrance was overwhelming. What was it to be? Charade, the Grace Kelly and Cary Grant of a sparkling-cold parallel universe? Jungle Jezebel, the fabulous, loud, slut? The ancient and boozy kick of the brand's new release, Va Va Vanilla?
I'd like to dive into all of them. But sitting, half empty on my dresser, calling out to me, is Loudo— the intelligent cherry from the nose of Chris Maurice. Something of a Dalí painting, Loudo is the crossbreed between a wooden pipe and a Blow Pop. It’s both Capricornian (the patriarchy, the Devil, the law) and Geminian (the youth, the Lovers, the impulse), perhaps for that reason it is my favorite—my “birth tarot cards” are The Lovers and The Devil, supposedly.
It conjures dusty floorboards and sticky candy fingers. Sensually, it brings me back to a memory of licking liquid cherry candy from the torso of a guy while lying on the floor of his late father’s dusty, art studio. But intellectually, Loudo feels aspirational. It embodies the kind of young person one might strive to be, and the kind of older person one could strive to be too. Informed but not jaded. Smart yet curious. Seriously fun.
Loudo opens with a bright, rich black cherry bolstered by neroli and cypriol, creating a fruity and verging-on-pungent lacquered antique accord that thickens into a syrupy, warm, musky amber-wood embrace. If the opening is a colorful retro board game laid out on the table, the dry-down is the act of tucking it away in the attic.
The House of Sarah Baker is not a purveyor of weightless, trendy spritzes. What makes the house special is its bold, even theatrical, elegance. Diamonds are heavy, lest you forget. Sarah Baker has curated a collection of meditations on pleasure, glamour, and decadence, always swinging big to deliver impact and personality. As fragrance crosses further over from fashion into the art world, it’s crucial not to catch a case of the art world’s communicable personality deficit. Sarah Baker avoids this. Her work, while unconventional, remains linked to the sensibility of Fashion and beauty, by that I mean it has real attitude. Loudo is strutting down the street wearing a 1920’s technicolor dandy suit and sucking on a Cherry Luden.
At the risk of veering into taboo territory, Loudo is at once Humbert and Lolita, a collision between the playful innocence of America and the high-brow library of European hedonism. It is, in fact, a meditation on age and what age means for pleasure. Nostalgia? It’s a bottled battle between feminine and masculine, youth and veterans, play and study."
Explore Loudo.
