My Story

by Jo Malone

  ‘Could you do that for me?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m not very good at reversing.’

  He looked flabbergasted. ‘No, madam. I will need you to do it.’

  The fact that I was actually admitting to a police officer that I wasn’t confident in manoeuvring the very vehicle in my charge was perhaps not the smartest move.

  ‘You do have a driving licence, madam?’

  ‘I do. Yes, I do . . . but I’ve only driven this car twice, today being my second time.’

  Thankfully, at that merciful minute, I saw a suited gentleman walking towards us – a member of Sarah’s staff who had come down to greet, or possibly rescue, me. Once the officers recognised him, the policeman kindly reversed my car while I profusely apologised about the palaver I had caused.

  I was taken to the second floor, where we walked down the widest corridor I’d ever seen, carpeted in scarlet red, in between walls papered with forest-green silk, and lined with gold-framed art. Everything felt so Victorian and opulent and there was a museum-like hush. Halfway down the corridor, the suited gentleman knocked on a solid wood door and we walked into an apartment which had a commanding view of the Queen Victoria Memorial and the avenue of The Mall.

  Sarah greeted me with her usual effusive warmth and a flash of red hair, and we sat down to talk through the previous eighteen months. Apart from Gary, I hadn’t spoken to anyone about what had happened and she let me talk, and cry, and get it all out. She listened with great sadness because she had known our family of old. As I laid out the treatment table for her facial, she took a pen and paper and wrote down ten names, just as Gina Sopwith, Alicia Castillo and many others had done. ‘These are the people I’m going to call,’ she said. ‘I’m going to help you as a friend, and you are going to build this business, Jo.’

  As I looked ahead to the future, the past was determined to hang on to my ankles, as illustrated by the legal letter that arrived in the post.

  In the week I had walked out of Balfern Street, a lawyer friend had advised me to send a letter, formally severing the business relationship with Mum. Boy, did that elicit a response from her lawyers! I hadn’t read the small print when we signed the agreement, so I didn’t know the implications of extricating myself from a partnership. That’s also when I learned the true scale of the debts that Mum had kept hidden: £30,000. Moreover, as a partner, this debt was my shared ‘ joint and several liability’, the lawyer said.

  I had inherited a debt that wasn’t mine and there was nothing I could do. I had to find a way to pay back that £30,000. I was informed that I was the only one who had the means to pay. Don’t worry, Jo’s got this. I don’t know how it was deemed that I, the one with a business that was yet to get off the ground, was in a better position than Mum with the established client base, but what was I going to do? I didn’t contest anything. I simply shouldered the responsibility and made an arrangement with NatWest, agreeing a payment of £450 a month, which was as good as a second mortgage.

  Launching a business with an albatross around my neck wasn’t the ideal start, but I refused to let it hamper me. Since the days of Bible school, Gary and I had a saying: ‘Keep turning the page.’ No disagreement, problem, worry or amount of yesterdays should bleed into tomorrow. Clear the air. Deal with it. Move on. And that’s what we resolved to do. I accepted the reality and vowed to chip away for as long as it took to pay off the loan. There was not a cat in hell’s chance that I was going to allow the past to derail me.

  Over the following months, something amazing started to happen with my business as word of mouth led to my phone ringing nonstop. My appointment book was chock-a-block in no time as twenty-two clients mushroomed into about fifty, and they were a cosmopolitan bunch, too: Britons, Americans, Indians, Greeks, Russians and Middle Easterners.

  Gary would drop me off in London around 9 a.m. and I would jump in a taxi throughout the day and bounce from house to house – from Belgravia to Knightsbridge, Chelsea to Kensington – until he picked me up around 6 p.m. I would continue in this vein for the next six months, building a platform, becoming established, and counting on this expanding network to keep putting my name out there. But Gary and I could see that the business was growing so quickly that we had no choice but to match its pace and move into the heart of the city. There was only so long we could do the back and forth from Crystal Palace. ‘Something good is happening here,’ he said, ‘and you need a base.’

  We knew that it would require a financial risk because we’d need to find somewhere central to our clientele, and that would mean high rent, while still paying off the inherited debt, not to mention the mortgage in Crystal Palace – we deliberately kept the flat as our safety net should all else fail. But Gary had it all worked out. Think of how much we’ll save in taxi fares and petrol, he said; think of the extra facials you could fit in working from one home-based clinic, instead of dashing all over London. He calculated that by increasing the price of a treatment by £5 to £50, we’d pretty much break even initially. A move to London made sense on every level. Besides, the business, not us, seemed to be dictating matters. We decided to follow her lead and see where she took us. We did what every entrepreneur must do when they are in the fortunate position of being able to harness momentum – we decided to leap again, trusting in what we had.

  And we kept turning the page.

  TWELVE

  When the estate agent opened the door to a one-bedroom rental flat a mere stroll from Sloane Square, I instantly knew I had found my castle.

  It didn’t matter that it looked drab, with grey walls, purple furniture and a kitchen the width and length of the interior of a black cab. I saw beyond all that. The front door opened into a hallway that connected the only two rooms of this third-floor flat: a rear double bedroom with en-suite, and a large living/dining room with a bay window that overlooked a residential street lined with red-brick, five-storey, Victorian mansion houses. I parted the filthy net curtains and spent a minute or two watching the world go by, imagining us living there. I spun around. Gary was right behind me. ‘This is it – this is where we’ll start,’ I said, emphatically.

  It was October 1990 and he had searched everywhere for a place that felt right. My husband’s nose for the right property is almost as good as mine with fragrance, and he had unearthed a gem. We would never have known the kind of security and happiness that we would go on to experience over the next decade in this flat – the place where we would build the Jo Malone London brand.

  Its location was ideal, north of the King’s Road, tucked behind the Peter Jones store. Life seemed intent on leading me to Chelsea: from living with the Sewells and my job at Pulbrook & Gould, to that first appointment with Alicia Castillo, almost as if I had walked these streets in the past to ready me for the future. Maybe that was the ‘click’ I felt on walking in.

  Our estate agent, an accommodating, nothing-is-too-much-trouble Australian called Sandra French, agreed to remove the hideous purple furniture as we arrived with a round dining table, a bookcase, a two-seater apricot-coloured sofa, a television, and two French dressers for either side of the central fireplace. Unfortunately, due to stretched finances, we had to keep the net curtains and still use our piece of blue foam as a bed.

  Sandra also agreed to two modifications in the lease: firstly, the deletion of the clause that said tenants weren’t allowed to conduct a commercial business from the premises; secondly, the addition of a break clause that if things didn’t work out with the business, we could vacate without penalty. Gary insisted on everything being above board, otherwise he’d never be able to sleep at night.

  The layout of the flat meant it was easy to visualise how the at-home clinic would be divided. We’d use the front room as our living quarters, flopping down the piece of foam on the floor each night before rolling it up and storing it in the hallway closet. The back bedroom, with a bath in the attached en-suite, would be the treatment room, and t
he 7 x 5-foot kitchen would be our somewhat cramped mini-lab. After a lick of white paint the flat looked as good as new, if a little stark, but we could add more furnishings and curtains later.

  On our first proper night there, Gary and I popped open a bottle of white wine and sat cross-legged on two cushions in front of the fireplace eating a Chinese takeaway. Because that’s what I still did when there was a special occasion to celebrate, as Dad and I used to do after a good day at the market.

  The flat was not luxurious by any means, even if the address may have been, and it was there that I discovered how much the sense of smell could bring luxury into even the most sparsely decorated room. Often, when I talk about scents, I refer to my fondness for the crisp smell of something clean and fresh; think newly laundered, pristine sheets in a hotel room; think of the effervescence of a slice of lime dropped into a fizzy glass of water. Think of the memory and sense its smell – that’s what I do. I wanted the sense of luxury to permeate the whole flat, for my benefit and that of the clients. So I’d go to the nearby Crabtree & Evelyn, buy a spiced lemon cologne and spray the sheets and towels, even the net curtains, leaving a gentle scent of deliciousness. I’d place twigs of rosemary on a baking tray and turn the oven on low. I’d burn different types of scented candles, infusing the flat with clean, relaxing aromas that brought me a sense of security. I did all this instinctively at the time; the idea that I would one day create my own fragrances hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

  We had a good bunch of neighbours in the building and, over time, we’d get to know them well. On the ground floor, there was a young Italian lawyer called Mario whose chirpy character brightened up my mornings whenever I saw him. There was never a dull moment with him around, with the stories of his social life and the property law cases he covered. The second floor belonged to a lady in her sixties. ‘Mrs P’ I called her, and she had strawberry blonde hair lacquered into an immoveable bun, and she wore the brightest red lipstick that was applied as generously as her face powder. She was a bit of a sticky-beak who, whenever she heard a noise or conversation on the stairs, pulled her door ajar, with the latch on, not wanting to miss a thing.

  ‘Morning, Mrs P!’ I’d say, running down the stairs.

  ‘Morning, dear,’ she’d say, and she’d slowly, reluctantly, close the door.

  Above us, on the fourth floor, were two beautiful, party-loving Italian sisters in their twenties, and their glamorous presence left Gary’s eyes out on stalks most of the time. I remember the day when they had a plumbing issue and he rushed upstairs to be their knight in shining armour. The ‘quick fix’ seemed to be taking an age. After leaving it an hour, I stepped out on to the communal landing. ‘GARY!’ He shot down those stairs faster than a rabbit out of a trap.

  Gradually, it dawned on them that I was a beauty therapist working from home. The foot traffic up and down the three flights of blue-carpeted stairs was hard to disguise, and I’m sure Mrs P had never spent so much time at her peephole. But not one of them complained, probably because they learned that there were perks to having me as a neighbour: each Christmas, I’d make up little gift bags of product and leave them outside their doors – my small ‘thank you’ for our happy co-existence.

  My main focus when we moved in was transforming the dreary bedroom into a treatment room, and I wanted to create the kind of space where clients could unload their troubles and stresses and step into a calming bubble for body and spirit. I wanted to go beyond anything I had previously seen with Madame Lubatti and Mum. It had to feel sensational, like nothing anyone had known.

  I still used my fold-up treatment bed, and we purchased a white stool for me to work from, a white chaise lounge for the client to relax on, and a small round table to place a white-shaded lamp on, for when I needed low, moody lighting. Gina Sopwith made me a rectangular, birdseye maple mirror as a house-warming gift and I propped it against a recessed wall to make the room look bigger. And my time working at two florist’s taught me that nowhere is complete without a vase of flowers, and so I bought white roses to finish off the heavenly theme I was going for.

  Before the first day of business, I sat, wearing my little white lab coat, at the head of the treatment bed, taking a moment to myself. A summer’s breeze travelled through the flat because the windows, front and rear, were wide open, and the door that led into the bedroom was also open, which allowed me to look straight down the hallway towards the sitting room. I heard the distant din of London in the background: the chugging of an idling black cab in the street; the horn of an angry motorist; and the banter of some builders working nearby. But my calm was uninterruptible within those four walls. I had captured what I set out to achieve: a simple, all-white haven that hovered somewhere between serenity and indulgence. And in that peace, when I gave myself the chance to pause, I knew that this was the beginning of something special.

  Such stillness and time for reflection would be hard to find in the coming years. From the moment the first client pressed the buzzer at the main entrance, the weeks and months would blur into one due to the ongoing, ever-accelerating momentum.

  My hamster-wheel days would start at 6 a.m. in the tiny kitchen, making face creams and setting aside oils for my back-to-back, ninety-minute appointments – one hour and fifteen for the actual treatment, and fifteen minutes for clients to ease back into reality. My diary, from Monday to Friday, tended to look like this: from 9 to 10.30 a.m., 10.30 a.m. to noon, noon to 1.30 p.m., lunch, 2.30 to 4 p.m., then 4 to 5.30 p.m., and finally 5.30 to 7 p.m. I’d do a maximum of six clients a day at £50 a treatment. I’d clean up by 8 p.m., make a quick dinner (or throw a frozen pizza in the oven) and then tackle the orders for customers who had left messages on the answering machine, requesting anything from two to five pots of face cream.

  I bought small, white paper bags and laid out the orders every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with Post-it notes stapled to the top. Customers quickly discovered that pick-ups were strictly between 1.30 and 2.30 p.m. With Gary at work, there was only one of me, so I had that hour-long window and that was it. If anyone – famous or not – buzzed the door at 2.32 p.m., I’d have to answer through the intercom and explain that I couldn’t serve them because I had a client with me. It’s amazing how punctual people learn to be when face creams are at stake.

  Over the years, many people from all walks of life would trot up and down our three flights of stairs: from celebrities – actors, pop stars, TV hosts, supermodels, and members of royalty from around the world – to clients who would save up to afford a facial every three months.

  The beauty of working with such a variety of people was that I didn’t really know what to expect. One week, a supermodel client told me that she had recommended me to ‘some friends’; in the following days, our stairwell resembled a vertical catwalk that could have rivalled London, Paris or Milan fashion weeks. And then there was the day I heard the blaring of horns outside, followed by a few disgruntled profanities. I hurried over to the living-room window and there below, stopped slap-bang in the middle of the street, was a row of four black SUVs – the security detail of a client who was stepping out of one vehicle and walking to my front door. ‘The neighbours are going to love me!’ I thought.

  Another time, Special Branch had to carry out a recce of the flat to evaluate the floor plan and exit points for a visiting foreign dignitary, but, short of someone shimmying up a drainpipe, there was only one way in and one way out. And the anonymity of the building meant that celebrity clients could come and go without being spotted.

  Had any journalists cast their eyes on my appointment book, they would have thought they were reading a beautician’s version of Who’s Who, and yet I wasn’t fazed by anyone’s status, calibre or fame. Skin doesn’t recognise class, and there is something about the intimate space between ‘the face girl’ and client that is a great leveller. The treatment room is a good place to realise that we’re all human, with the same skin issues, same emotions, same flaws, and that fame an
d wealth aren’t character traits. I took the privacy of each client seriously and, in time, everyone came to understand and value that my discretion was assured. I’m pleased to say that in the ten years we were there, not one newspaper or member of the paparazzi traced anyone to my door.

  Conveniently, a Safeway store was just around the corner on King’s Road, meaning we could pop there and back within five minutes whenever we were short on supplies. One morning, in those first two weeks, I nipped out because I needed more plain yoghurt to make up a face mask. On the way back, at the zebra crossing on the corner of our street, I recognised a woman on the opposite side of the road – one of Mum’s longest-standing clients, a member of the ‘old guard’, as I used to call them. As soon as she saw me, she marched over and spat at me, leaving a spray of saliva on the lapel of my white beautician’s coat. She spat out her words, too. ‘What you’ve done, to your own mother, is disgusting!’ With that, she stomped off, nose in the air, no doubt feeling satisfied that she had made her point, albeit while demonstrating it with the actions of a lout.

  I stood there and wiped away her spit with my sleeve. It stunned me that this ‘lady’ had acted in such a way, and it hurt, too. Being spat at in the street made me feel like dirt; it also told me that wild gossip was spreading a narrative that I had somehow treated Mum badly and left her in the lurch. The more successful I would become, the more this myth would grow legs, running around London’s high society until it became a Chinese whisper. Only one person spat at me, but I would face sly remarks and disapproving looks from those who didn’t know or care for the facts. No one had the balls to have a direct conversation and ask what really happened. No one had a clue about what had really gone on, or how much I had loved my mum, or about the debt I was paying off.

  I tend to view this sorry mess the same way I viewed it back then: human nature is divided between those who thrive on, and get easily distracted by, gossip and they tend to go nowhere; and those people who know their purpose, know what they want, and won’t give weight to the chirpings of misinformed tittle-tattle because they know that such things are a waste of focus and energy. Once back at the flat, I had a little cry, dried my tears, and then got straight back to work, making more product.