Q&A: Liberated Ascent Founder Liberty Cordova On Going From The Dance World To The Big Business Of Fragrances

The best art or innovation comes out of selfishness. All good ideas should start with creating something you want or need. That was the inspiration for Liberty Cordova’s new fragrance, Liberated Ascent.

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The dancer/actress explains, “I love perfumes, but I couldn’t wear them. I have a very sensitive system and sensitive skin, and I would react to it. I’d get a headache, I would get nauseous, I would have a rash. So I decided to take a deep dive in how to create a non-toxic product that also created a mood and elicited certain responses, and something that moved me ultimately, because as an artist that’s what I’m always looking for.”

As the quote that started with Plato’s “Our need will be the creator” eventually became, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” So looking for products she could herself wear and not get sick from, the talented and driven Cordova began researching the big business of fragrances and how to make them.

Now, five years after she began exploring how to make fragrances as a hobby, she has three fragrances of her own in stores in both Los Angeles and her native Salt Lake City and an online business that is growing daily.

I spoke with Cordova about the musical inspiration to her new business, how starting Liberated Ascent compares and differs with her experience as a freelance artist and much more.

Steve Baltin: So what does Liberated Ascent mean to you?

Liberty Cordova: Liberated Ascent, to me has a lot of different meanings. But it is a beautiful way of saying to uplift, to raise your vibration, and for yourself, and it was kind of a play on freeing yourself in general. ‘Cause obviously, my name is Liberty, and also free yourself from toxins and chemicals and synthetic fragrances. So yeah, kind of came to me. Also Ascent is obviously a climbing term, so I thought that was a cool way to integrate nature and climbing and the process of ascent, because climbing is such a journey and a mental and a spiritual journey. So yeah, those all kind of came together.

Baltin: What are the moods that this create for you?

Cordova: Symphonics is designed to be uplifting and focusing, energize. Suelo is more grounding. Suelo means ground basically in Spanish or Earth. I grew up in the Wasatch Mountains, so getting back to the earth and having that grounding feeling of a hike or a climb and being out in nature and La Loba is more of a reset and de-stressor and a way to kind of come back to yourself and have a moment of self-love. All of them are a moment of self-love, but that one especially, ’cause it is very heart-opening.

Baltin: So when did you start working on the idea?

Cordova: I had the idea probably back in 2016 or 2017. I started exploring different perfumeries and trying different scents or perfumes that claim to be natural and pure. And it was like a hobby for me to go, “Okay, I’m gonna go check out these lines and these scents and figure out what I wanted in a scent and something that felt like me and something that, again, moved me.” And I also wanted to create something that went back to the basics of scent and the rituals, and have it be more of a self-love and not so much about it being for everybody else. We see these commercials for perfume and we all know how they are. They are kind of designed to make people think that fragrance is for everybody else, that’s a by-product, which is great, but this is kind of going back to the ancient roots of scent. And it’s designed to be more of a personal experience and kind of a check-in and a way to make you feel good.

Baltin: That definitely differs from most fragrances, which are advertised to make you feel desirable to the opposite sex. So are these going to get you laid?

Cordova: (Laughter) Right, it’s very, I would say hyper-sexualized and in a lot of ways designed for the opposite sex to attract, as opposed to you enjoying it and it bringing out your best quality. I would say definitely La Loba, Suelo comes into a close second, depending on your preference but honestly, all of them, each one of them has something different in there. Jasmine is an aphrodisiac, rose is an aphrodisiac. A lot of women I know find more woodsy and smoky scents to be more attractive on themselves and on anybody really. I think, honestly, it is all about preference, everybody’s different, everybody’s attracted to a different scent. It’s all related to the olfactory nerve and memory and how you feel about that scent that’s gonna be what brings out the sensuality.

Baltin: How do you find the fragrance world is similar or different from the arts worlds that you’ve worked in?

Cordova: Everything in the arts eventually becomes a business in a way, so even as an actress and a dancer and a singer you reach a point where you have to deal with the business side of it, and also creative’s and freelancers are entrepreneurs already. So I had that experience to translate into my business. I also come from a family of small business. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I got a lot of insight in that. I was also thrown into the deep end managing a store in the West Village in New York right before I launched, which was really cool. So I think, honestly, every single thing I’ve done somewhat gave me the tools that I needed to be able to do this. But I’m a very curious person, and I wouldn’t say I get bored easily, but I like to constantly be trying new things and creating new things. And this, to me, felt just as creative as movement or filming something where I’m emoting in acting or even creating a song, there’s the art side and there’s the business side that is always gonna be there. So I think in that way, yeah, it all kind of ties together.

Baltin: What are your qualities that you share with Liberated Ascent?

Cordova: All of them, honestly. Each of them are, in a way, a part of me. Symphonics was inspired by music and my love for music, I took this deep dive into these videos where people were connecting electrodes to plants and connecting the electrodes to a synthesizer and the plants were creating this music. And it kind of blew my mind. I was in awe of this nature song, so that was the inspiration behind Symphonics. As far as La Loba goes, I’m a woman, obviously. I have a really profound respect for the divine feminine and women as creators and just feminine in all forms. And so that is how La Loba was born. And Suelo, I just always think of nature and my roots and growing up in the mountains, and that was always my way of resetting and coming back to myself, being an artist can be insane. You’re all over the place and you’re working, you’re not working. Being multi-faceted, I wasn’t just focused on one thing. I was focused on many things, so getting grounded, getting out into the mountains, getting into nature, back to basics was such a huge part of why I was able to keep going as an artist and why I’m still going, and I felt like I wanted to bring that to everybody else.

Baltin: What stores are you in now?

Cordova: I am in Chateau De Bambu in Los Angeles where they’re actually using my oils in the treatments as well as having them for sale. So they’re using them as a part of the aroma therapy in the treatment to treat the customers during the services, which is really exciting, and I hope to see more of that in spas and facials and massage, ’cause I think it’s perfect for that. And we’re also in Stockist in Salt Lake City in my hometown, right across the street from where my dad’s business was, all my life, which is cool. And WUM Essential Elements Topanga, which is an apothecary.

Baltin: Did you personally go in and create these relationships with all these stores?

Cordova: Yes, I personally went in and created relationships with the stores. I’m a very chatty person, I’ll go in and talk to anybody, and a few of the stores hadn’t even smelled my Liberated Ascent before, and already was like, “I want to carry this as soon as you launch,” beforehand. So it was pretty cool.

Baltin: So what would be the dream stores to have it in?

Cordova: I would love for people to be able to have access to it on places like Credo Beauty and Detox Market, which are great places to find clean beauty. Obviously, anywhere and everywhere where people can have access to clean scents and get the education and know exactly what they’re getting. I’m happy to have it there. Yeah.

Baltin: Tell me about the music component, the live sessions you have been doing.

Cordova: Symphonic sessions. So, as I said before, I went down the deep dive of the electrodes connected to the plants and them creating the songs. And I wanted to bring something more relatable, to relate to Symphonics rather than singing vegetables or something like that. [Laughter] So I wanted to feature artists and just highlight what they’re doing, their upcoming work and ultimately just have a conversation and chat with them and do something that might be a little different and out of the box. Plus it’s an excuse to listen to music. I had Printz Board and May Erlewine so far, and there’s some cool people lined up I’ll be announcing for the next symphonic session, which I’m really excited about. And I’m just excited to see all the different types of music, ’cause so far it’s been very, very different vibes. And I want that to continue.

Baltin: And are you booking the artist yourself. So right now, it’s like a one-person operation?

Cordova: [Laughter] Yeah, I have my very dear friend who also grew up in the mountains, who designed my logo, Julia Wheatley, she is an amazing artist, model, NFT artist, she’s just multi-faceted and did such a beautiful job of bringing my logo to life, but yeah otherwise that’s very much the case. [chuckle]

Baltin: Obvious question, who is the dream artist to have do this symphonic sessions?

Cordova: I would love to have Rosalia, she’d should be the perfect La Loba person to come on. Gosh, I mean, you know some of my favorites are Gary Clark Jr, ASAP [Rocky], man, Jack White would be amazing. Let’s start there. I have so many different styles of music that I love and.

Baltin: Has most of the stuff been online driven to this point?

Cordova: It’s been online driven to this point and then my brick and mortar is as well. I’m in talks with stores in New York and San Francisco, just got to catch up to myself.

Baltin: Have you found that as you do this and you start to have success with it, you’re hearing from other brands that want to work with you?

Cordova: I’m definitely getting people reaching out. Behind the scenes, hopefully people are looking at their products and their ingredients and seeing how that they can, improve. I’m a small business and I’m making tiny ripples that hopefully create huge waves ’cause I think that there’s a lot of change needed in the industry and there’s so much education on my website. The data is there and there’s a lot of stuff that’s not safe for you that people are putting on their body every day. Not just women, also men, from shampoo to lotions, to cleaning products, candles, anything where you’re experiencing synthetics, which ultimately can wreck havoc on your body and create all kinds of problems. So that’s important to me. I care about people’s health and we face so much environmental like toxicity in our day to day. So however I can eliminate that, I think it can make small changes and make big differences for people over time.