Sebastian Jara is a highly respected fragrance expert, writer and raconteur based in San Francisco. He's probably better known under his professional aliases; as The Perfume Guy on Instagram and as a pioneering fragrance vlogger, the creator and face of his extremely popular Smelling Great Fragrance Reviews channel on YouTube.
As with so many other great people in the fragrance community, the pandemic has made it a longer than usual wait to catch up face-to-face with Sebastian. So, it was really great that I was able to meet up with him in San Francisco during my trip to California to visit my family. Better still, it turned out to be not one, but two opportunities to have a good conversation.
After I visited Sebastian and we spent a great afternoon in the City by the Bay, he asked me to join him on The Perfume Guy Instagram Live channel later that week to get his followers up to speed with developments at the House of Sarah Baker.
What resulted was something like a state-of-play “snapshot” of our brand as it is now since Sebastian asked me to go through the entire published catalogue across all collections as well as a sneak preview of our yet-to-be-released new artist’s edition, Loudo.
To be honest, I was terrified because it seemed like a daunting task: in preparing, I was reminded that we really do have quite a lot of fragrances now. But Sebastian is one of those calming people who puts you at ease and it really was great fun, especially when we occasionally deviated off topic to chat about our shared love of film—incidentally, Sebastian went to film school which no doubt contributes to the polish of his videos.
Reviewing it later, one of the things that strikes me is that this filmed conversation is a great crash course or primer about all of our juices for anyone who doesn’t yet know them or wants to know more about a particular scent. From Sebastian’s thoughts on the notes to me explaining the concepts behind individual juices, it effortlessly offers a one-stop-shop to get to the heart of every one of our fragrances to date.
And, for those who love being the first to hear about something new, you’ll be pleased to know that Sebastian very much approves of our forthcoming, ultra-concentrated Loudo. You can see what he has to say, and a whole lot more, here.
As my family and I ready ourselves for the long journey back to London I can most certainly say that catching up with Sebastian is one of the most memorable experiences of this trip. And, thank you, Sebastian, for your encouragement, support and kind words.