My Story

by Jo Malone

  And that’s how Gary and I ended up boarding the plane to France.

  The trip coincided with our wedding anniversary, so it would be part work, part pleasure, allowing me to justify my audacity at least should we run into dead ends. But regardless of the outcome, Gary and I were grateful to have time away from the business. We couldn’t remember the last time we had properly unwound, and we hadn’t visited Paris before so we were going to enjoy a four-day break.

  We stayed at the Hotel Princesse Caroline, on a street just north of the Arc de Triomphe and I instantly liked how Paris didn’t feel as hurried as London; less rat race, more laissez-faire. Locals strolled, they didn’t scurry. The city seemed to breathe creative air, and every turn of every corner opened up a new enchanting street or architectural beauty.

  Gary and I visited the sights and museums, and treated ourselves to the famous chocolate cake at Angelina’s on Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the Jardin des Tuileries, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance. The tearoom alone symbolised the grandeur and aristocratic nature of Paris and, as I people-watched from our window table, it felt like I was observing a scene pulled from a 1950s movie. ‘Mum would love it here,’ I thought – the energy, the unapologetic femininity, the chic style, and the confident but demure manner with which the ladies carried themselves, leaving behind a waft of the perfume they wore so boldly. Mum had never visited Europe, yet she would have absolutely fitted in, a swan among swans. She and I hadn’t spoken but I knew from Dot that her business was ticking along and they were doing fine, and that was all I needed to know from a distance. I was happy that she and Tracey had found their way after the dissolution of our partnership.

  On our second day in Paris, I took a break from being a tourist and changed into my make-a-first-impression outfit: a little navy trouser suit. I left Gary at the hotel and walked to the offices of Lautier Florasynth, where Derek had agreed to meet me. As soon as I entered the lobby, lined with glass cabinets filled with bottles of perfume, it felt like a museum of fragrances, thick with the scent of jasmine. Everyone who walked by me was dressed in black and wearing an intense look on their face, moving about the place in quiet reverence but with great purpose.

  I took up my position on a black leather couch and waited for Derek. As I did so, I looked through the glass into one office and noticed a man pegging thin strips of paper to a table’s edge – he was, as I found out later, drying fragrance strips. I could have stayed there all afternoon being a sticky-beak but I saw Derek striding over. As I stood to greet him, an immaculately dressed, studious-looking man was crossing the lobby floor, holding a bottle and a paper, looking every inch the master perfumer.

  ‘Derek! Derek!’ I whispered. ‘Do you think that man can help?’

  ‘Ab-so-lutely not, Jo. That’s Monsieur Jean-Louis Sieuzac.’

  Without realising it, one of the great ‘noses’ had just crossed my path. Monsieur Sieuzac was a true genius who had most notably created fragrances such as Dune and Fahrenheit for Christian Dior, and Opium for Yves St Laurent.

  The only audience I’d be granted that day was with Derek, who took me into a room and effectively invited me to lay my cards on the table – the ‘Okay, let’s hear what you want to do’ moment. No chummy chat between friends; this was professional and, if I was serious about making fragrances, he wanted to hear my plans in detail.

  I’m not sure I drew breath as I proceeded to gush about how I’d trusted my nose since being a young girl and how certain scents made me feel alive. I reeled off a list of different childhood memories and the smells they evoked, and how these smells were the palette I wanted to explore to create fragrance. I reminded him about my belief in the business and how I’d progressed from face creams to body lotions to bath oils, and how I foresaw the same success with perfumes and colognes.

  ‘I’m passionate about this, Derek. And I can do this . . . if you can help me.’

  I think that was the moment he started taking me seriously, or maybe he thought, ‘This girl isn’t going to quit.’ Either way, he spent the next two or three hours with me, providing a crash course in how perfume houses worked, how scents are extracted from flowers, and how a fragrance is constructed. Then there was a whole new language to grasp, such as the accord that happens when individual ingredients blend to become a unified scent; or the notes that make up a fragrance’s composition – a top note (the first impression; the accent that soon fades), the middle (the core and most distinguishable scent), and the base (the longest-lasting essence; the truth left on the skin). And don’t forget the tiers of the creation process: clients (the brand) consult with an evaluator who acts as the bridge to the perfumer (‘the nose’). The evaluator, he explained, expresses a detailed concept to take to ‘the nose’, who then sits in a lab, surrounded by a palette of hundreds of aromas, and weaves together notes – drop by millilitre drop – to create different variations of the fragrance outlined.

  ‘What you need to know is that only the evaluator can work with the perfumer, not the client,’ he stressed. ‘Those masters won’t work one-on-one with you.’

  Derek emphasised that point. I noted it as ‘a rule’ to be addressed later.

  But at this meeting, and others that would follow, I appreciated every insight and piece of knowledge he laid out like building blocks placed in front of a child learning the alphabet for the first time. Derek was the most patient teacher and, through him, I came to understand the alchemy and wizardry involved in fragrance-making. The more I heard, the more I wanted to dive in.

  He was the one who made me realise that while we may work with chemicals, compounds and molecules, it is not a science but an art – the art of fragrance, complete with its own sculpted structure and musicality. If music is an art emitted by sound waves, then perfumery is an art emitted by olfactory vibrations. And it has kept evolving ever since the creation, in the 1300s, of the first alcohol-based product called Hungary Water, a rose and orange flower infused perfume made on the orders of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary.

  As I wrapped up that initial meeting with Derek, my head was spinning from all the knowledge, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and spill it all out to Gary. But before I left, and after agreeing to meet next in London, he turned to me and asked, ‘Have you ever been to Grasse?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s there?’

  Grasse, in the south of France, one hour’s drive from Monaco, sits on the hilltops north of Cannes, and is la capitale mondiale des parfums. It’s where perfumers have flocked since the end of the eighteenth century. This genteel town is the heart and soul of fragrance; the cosmetic floor of nature’s chic department store that is the French Riviera. The minute you arrive, the fragrant air engulfs you – the rose, jasmine, orange blossom, lavender, and wild mimosa that are all hand-plucked and collected in wicker baskets.

  Gary and I stayed at Hotel des Parfums, located on a hill overlooking the old town. We strolled down a winding road into a quaint, ancient square surrounded by cafés, boulangeries, and compact townhouses that were a watercolour wash of ochre and peach, with turquoise-green shuttered windows and terra cotta tiled roofs. A bell tolled from its twelfth-century cathedral, momentarily interrupting the buzz of the daily market packed with flower stalls, adding to the dreamy scent drifting through the narrow cobbled lanes. Even the Victorian, hinged lamp posts offered flowers, geraniums spilling from hanging baskets. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

  We found a table beneath a beautiful tree outside a brasserie, and we sat there, in the dappled shade, enjoying steak frites and a carafe of rosé wine, taking in the local scene, a scene that my dad could have painted. In that spot, in that square, I fell in love with fragrance. Head over heels for life. In the evenings, all I wanted to do was sit outside and breathe in the heady air, pulling in every sight and smell.

  That week, my education continued as we visited two of Grasse’s perfume houses: Molinard, established in 1849, and Fragonard, dating back to 1926. But the re
al spectacle was the International Perfume Museum where we wandered its three floors – passing giant brass kettles, decanters, steel vats, and nineteenth-century copper stills, with elephantine pipes looping in an arch into boiler-sized centrifuges. That’s where I realised I had come home.

  If my time in Paris involved Derek telling me about the basics, then the visit to Grasse was about artisans showing me the meticulous process, from collecting petals in the fields to distillation, absorption, extraction, blending, and the finished fragrance captured in crystal bottles. I had never seen anything quite like it. I had never seen jasmine and tuberose pressed into a layer of cold animal fat spread across plates of glass in wooden frames (the fat soaks up the odour and the pomades are then washed in alcohol to eliminate the fat, leaving behind fragranced alcohol). I had never imagined such a thing as an orange blossom garden, or halls of jasmine packed into bundles of sackcloth.

  Each evening, before and after dinner, I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and experiment with some of the sample ‘notes’ Derek had sent me before my trip. They were in 10ml brown and green bottles that had a pronounced lip around the top of the neck, to help measure out one drop at a time. He had given me some teat-pipettes and I’d pinch one drop, two drops, three drops on to my own fragrance blotter strips, trying to compose something from this note and that. I was playing around, getting carried away with different aromas, jotting down combinations that I thought worked, scratching the ones that didn’t, listening only to my instinct: ‘Try more complex jasmine here . . . a touch more lavender there.’

  I’ve heard it said that the definition of joy is being immersed in something in which you lose yourself. For me, that was, and remains, the transporting effect of fragrance. Gary was somewhere in the room, on the periphery, on some earthly plane that I had left behind in order to explore a safe dreamscape that would only ever be accessible to me and fragrance. That was what Grasse did for me – it opened up a fifth dimension. I’ve always said that those four days felt like a spiritual experience, connecting me to my purpose in life. Never before had I seen a reflection of myself so clearly and realised who I was.

  Once my amateur compositions were ready – I’d use wooden pegs that I’d bought to clip fragrance strips to the table’s edge, mimicking what I had seen at Lautier Florasynth – I’d then wait, with eyes on my wristwatch, because, like any great drama, a fragrance unfolds in three acts as the alcohol evaporates during the ‘dry-down’ period. Act One comes in the first minute, teasing the scent to come; Act Two kicks in after about five minutes, when the molecules react with the skin and the fragrance starts to reveal its story; and Act Three, ten minutes in, provides the crescendo when, after full absorption, the evocative essence truly settles on the skin. That’s why I advise people never to make up their mind about a fragrance based on the first spray. No one at any perfume counter should expect a purchase after Act One. The earliest time to reach for your purse is Act Two; though it is preferable to wait until the finale when a fragrance’s sincerity fully blossoms.

  I learned everything there is to know about fragrance in Grasse, and I would soon have the opportunity to apply this new-found knowledge. In the following weeks, Derek would go to his superiors to argue my case, effectively saying, ‘Let’s give her a chance.’ Whatever he said, and however he pitched me, it must have been convincing because he invited me into the Lautier Florasynth stable as a client – the break I needed.

  I would now be able to utilise fully my sense of smell, and nurture my relationship with creativity, getting to know its rhythm and timing, soon learning that ideas will come when strolling down the street, or sitting in a coffee shop, or on a plane. Once unleashed, this creativity would be boundless, opening up a whole new avenue of possibilities. And a series of inspirations would lead to the fragrance that would truly put me on the map: Lime Basil & Mandarin.

  FOURTEEN

  When I start to develop the idea for a fragrance, I am, in my mind, creating a unique character that breathes on its own, with a heartbeat, soul and personality: whispering to me its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses; hinting whether it will be dominant in a room or more reserved, and whether it will turn heads or slowly grow on people. But however it behaves socially, one thing is guaranteed: each one will make its charm and presence felt, stirring moods, memories, emotions . . . and our senses.

  At the risk of sounding a little odd to the non-aficionados, fragrance, to me, is not a shapeless form that evaporates into thin air; it is a living beauty that, once out of the bottle and on the skin, comes alive in its invisibility. I tend to personify a fragrance, and if I could issue gentle guidance to each one before it steps out in public, I would say, ‘Be bold and make your presence felt. Never be generic. Forever be unique. Evoke emotion. Connect. Trigger memories.’

  Personally, the most rewarding moment is when a fragrance proves its worth and starts communicating, using the different notes of its composition to express itself. And then, when everyone starts buying it, raving about its qualities and how its essence makes them feel, I can sit back and feel like a proud parent.

  I want a fragrance to ignite not only our sense of smell but our four other senses. If I were developing a fragrance with Grasse as my inspiration, I would pull the memory from a mental photographic library: I’m in the square of the old town, sitting outside the brasserie. Okay, so what do I smell, see, feel, taste and hear? I taste the berries of the rosé wine. I smell the tarragon from someone cooking in a nearby kitchen, and the flowers in the market. I see a dog lying in the shade beneath a tree. I feel the sun hitting my skirt and the warmth I want to bask in. I hear the clang of the bells from the cathedral and the chatter of people all around.

  I’ll stay immersed in that scene because each memory unlocks another, and then another, firing like a fast-moving montage, allowing me to whiz through every recall and sensation, selecting the smells that resonate and eliminating the ones that don’t. How can I create the smell of burnt clay on terra cotta tiles? What’s the note that evokes geraniums? What scent is warm like summer? How do I recreate the cold rosé on my lips? My mind continues in that vein, ten to the dozen, racing through images at a million miles an hour, kicking up and spraying around different memory associations in order to pluck just one or two notes that I can then start to experiment with.

  For me, everything returns and speaks to me via my nose. In its simplest form, removed from the complexities of the technical process, that’s how my creative process begins. This scattered, disorderly, untrained approach might not be the conventional way a fragrance is designed, but, then again, nothing I do is ‘conventional’. Yet the perfumers with whom I work trust that, no matter the tangents I explore, I’ll ultimately take them to the desired destination. And that’s exactly what happened with Lime Basil & Mandarin.

  In the months since Paris and Grasse, I had continued to experiment with different samples sourced from Derek and, for the first time in my life, I started to believe I could excel at something. Fragrance not only flooded me with ideas but it made me feel complete, fuelling an almost obsessive drive of creativity.

  When Lime Basil & Mandarin first arrived as a spark of inspiration, I didn’t know it would turn out to be as big as it was. Nor did the idea come in one burst; it gradually percolated over many weeks until a series of loose thoughts and memories coalesced.

  If I remember the order of those thoughts correctly, it was the random memory of me sucking on a lime-chocolate sweet as a kid that first made me think of lime, and so I started from there, playing with a whole host of different lime notes in my kitchen, initially mixing them into a body lotion base. Matters of structure and composition didn’t even enter the equation within this rudimentary process, though it is no surprise that my experimentation began with a citrus note – the signature theme that would underpin, or be laced through, everything I’d create.

  Other memories or observations then came to mind, one triggering another: me squeezing a
lime in the kitchen – the idea for a sharp, cologne-like character; dinner at the Sambuca Italian restaurant in Symonds Street where I enjoyed a pasta in pesto sauce – the smell of basil with its aniseed twists. I thought about that herb which made me think of summer, and summer made me think of orange groves, and orange reminded me of the orange and cinnamon wreaths we used to buy for the flat in Crystal Palace. But oranges weren’t sweet enough. What’s sweeter than oranges? Mandarins. Go with mandarins. And from that foundation, I was off and running, snatching an hour with my pipettes and weighing scales, laying out the notes in front of me, waiting for a rough sketch of the smell to form.

  Once I felt I had pinned down the general idea, I called Derek and briefed him verbally that I wanted to create a Lime Basil & Mandarin fragrance, outlining which notes I wanted to emerge first, which should hover in the background, and which should linger. And that’s what sent me into true fragrance development with a perfumer in Paris in 1991, although I still had one small hurdle to overcome.

  As much as Derek had forewarned me about industry protocols – clients consult with an evaluator who liaises with the perfumer – I didn’t like the idea of being one stage removed. I understood an evaluator’s value in tracking tests and generally managing a project, but I couldn’t bear the idea of not brainstorming one-on-one with the actual ‘nose’. How could I put my name to something if it was created at arm’s length, with me outside the room? It made no sense. ‘Derek,’ I said, ‘I have to be part of the creation process. I can’t work any other way.’

  I told him that I needed to learn from the perfumer. Why did orange blossom smell floral one minute and then like a masculine cologne the next? Why can lavender smell like dog pee on a bush and then the cleanest soap? Why can liquid honey smell offensive at first but then come across all velvety when mixed with alcohol? I was like a child armed with a thousand ‘whys’ and only the perfumer had the answers.