Sarah Baker Year XOXO Review

Sarah Baker Year XOXO, AI image by Nicoleta 

By now, my avatars in Sarah Baker’s vanilla universe have included a mysterious, gun-slinging outlaw riding through a smoky, boozy, Wild West and a va-va-voom diva slipping into a Manhattan jazz club, delicate as a bomb with the pin pulled, fueled by cocktails, coffee and all sorts of reckless decisions. So, we’ve had the past ruled by a dangerous vanilla in Velvet Vendetta, and naughty, contemporary vanilla in Va Va Vanilla.

What’s next? Apparently, we jump one hundred years forward and ask: what will vanilla smell like in the future? Spoiler, straight from perfumer Margaux Le Paih-Guérin: “anti-gourmand.” Apparently, vanilla survives the apocalypse. Gourmand does not.

Sarah Baker, image via the brand

“The Year XOXO story is sci-fi, but organic: a future world of plants, bio engineering, computing and a hidden Garden of Paradise. That comes through in the fragrance itself, with green apple, natural vanilla, soft musks, ozone and cashmere woods creating something fresh, clean and a little otherworldly.” –  Sarah Baker

But first, let’s whet our appetite with a bit of the backstory. The year is 2126, and we find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic desert landscape where the survivors guard a hidden subterranean paradise and the last apple tree on Earth, which also doubles as an organic time machine. Their sanctuary is a library of paperback books entwined with vanilla vines, and their mission is to preserve knowledge for the next generation. They fiercely debate whether to protect the future or go looking for paradise in the past.

The present might just be chaotic enough to make the idea of escaping into a post-apocalyptic future sound strangely reassuring: a close-knit community, books, perfume, a little subterranean organic gardening and the possibility of time travel? Where do I sign?

Margaux Le Paih-Guérin, photo via the brand

“The idea behind Year XOXO was to imagine the future of the trilogy. While it was quite easy to picture what this place looked like a century ago and what it looks like today, imagining its future was much more challenging. Sarah and I envisioned something airy and futuristic. Of course, our forbidden vanilla is still at the heart of this perfume, but this time, it’s floating in a cloud. I worked with a lot of strong, transparent and effervescent molecules to create this anti-gourmand vanilla in the year 2126. It was both challenging and incredibly exciting. I really loved working on it!” – Margaux Le Paih Guérin of Flair Paris

 At Esxence in Milan and ScentFest in San Francisco, hundreds of fragrance lovers sampled three different mods and cast their votes with a very on-brand coin bearing the Sarah Baker logo. Mod 1 leaned musky and ambroxan-heavy; Mod 3 took vanilla into aldehydic, leathery territory. But Mod 2, with its optimistic burst of crisp green apple wrapped around vanilla, stole the show with 46% of the vote and became Year XOXO. A little fragrance democracy behind the scenes, perfectly in tune with Sarah’s belief that experiencing art is itself a form of collaboration.

Sarah Baker Year XOXO voting, image via the brand Instagram

Year XOXO opens with a luscious, crisp green apple accord, and my mind goes straight to an bio-enhanced apple, reconstructed molecule by molecule, its brightness turned up until it feels more-real-than-real. A little biotechnological temptation, polished to surreal perfection, fit for a new Eve in a new Eden. Somewhere in my gamer brain, the Apple of Eden from Assassin’s Creed begins to glow. And we all know how well things tend to go when someone reaches for that particular forbidden fruit… The vision blurs. White noise, static, then an abrupt lift sends everything up, up and away into a rush of molecular ozone and fresh, clean… cleaner-than-clean air. Fluffy clouds of soft musks drift by, weightless, carefree, picture-perfect. Somewhere beyond that immaculate blue, I half expect to find the edge of the sky, Truman-style.

Feels as if a holodeck had been set to its ultimate comfort simulation, conjuring up a paradise of impossibly fluffy white clouds, endless blue skies and not a single speck of dust in sight. All soft edges, weightless comfort and an almost suspicious level of perfection. And through it floats the vanilla, sweet and a little dry, with that wonderful papery texture that feels like contemporary art, all clean lines and generous white space. There’s something wonderfully familiar about this vanilla, a reassuring contrast to all this abstract perfection. It adds another layer of comfort to the pillowy musks, evoking the familiar gesture of turning a page, the soft friction of paper against your thumb, a story you’ve read so often that the book falls open at your favourite passage.

Sarah Baker Year XOXO mood image via the brand

Oh yes,  and there’s the serpent… Slipping its tail between the pages, curling around the ankles, here it is, finding its way into the story again and again. Beneath all that airy innocence, the forbidden vanilla still knows a thing or two about temptation. The cashmere woods lend a soft, brushed warmth, while the musky suggestion of warm skin begins to make this immaculate paradise feel a little more… inhabited. The woods and skin draw closer, and something decidedly naughty begins to stir in our beautifully preserved Garden of Paradise. A hundred years into the future, and we’re still reaching for the apple, again and again.

Sarah Baker Year XOXO mood image via the brand

Being optimistic about the future these days feels almost revolutionary. Wearing Year XOXO, I kept thinking of one of my favourite J. D. Salinger lines: “I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” Year XOXO has exactly that energy: comfortable and comforting, a vanilla with its sweetness held in suspension, threaded through the air, abstract and otherworldly, yet remarkably easy to wear.

Sarah Baker Year XOXO  AI image by Nicoleta

I loved the smoky swagger of Velvet Vendetta, the caffeinated sensuality of Va Va Vanilla, and now the creative, positive aura of Year XOXO. Three very different scented avatars, each one pulling vanilla into a completely different world. And after peaches and vanilla, I can only wonder where Sarah Baker’s arc will take us next.

Warning: May cause sudden craving for Granny Smith apples, make you add perfume to your emergency supplies, and judge potential apocalypse companions by the books they would save.

Note from the brand: For the Vanilla trilogy, and contained within all three fragrances, is natural Madagascan vanilla which Margaux sourced from Behave, a non-profit organization supporting sustainability, biodiversity and perfume-producing communities.

In three words: Crispy, ozonic, clouds.  

Notes:  Top: Green apple, soft musks, ozone Heart: Paperback books, warm skin, white paint wash; Base: Cashmere wood, fluffy clouds effect, Forbidden vanilla

Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor

Disclosure: Perfume kindly gifted by the brand, as always, opinions are my own.

Also, check out the reviews for Vava Vanilla, Velvet Vendetta is a best of scent for Nicoleta, Pastel Rumors, Peach’s Revenge is Best of Scent for Steven

Margaux LE PAIH GUÉRIN was Michelyn’s Perfumer of the Year 2025

Read the entire interview with Margaux Le Paih-Guérin in our ÇaFleureBon Young Perfumer Series here

Thanks to the generosity of Sarah Baker we have a 50 ml bottle of Year XOXO for one registered reader from the EU and US. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review and where you live. Draw closes 10/24/26

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