by Jo Malone
In my absence, the business had understandably carried on without me and continued to grow, but something felt strangely different. This disconnect – the feeling that my heart wasn’t in it any more – perturbed me, though I didn’t breathe a word to Gary, not wishing to give voice to the doubt, just in case it made the doubt grow louder.
At first, I tried dismissing it as a mood or a phase, but, with each passing week, I increasingly viewed my one-time passion as nothing more than a business, and it had never been that to me before; it could never be that to me. I will forever be a person who is one hundred per cent or nothing and, though I couldn’t quite understand why, I felt incredibly half-hearted about everything. I even started to wonder if this was because my sense of smell wasn’t firing in the same way, as if all this doubt was blocking my creativity. Estée Lauder had been wonderful to me, and wonderful for the brand, but the dynamics had changed somehow during my time away. Whether that change was within me or a part of the business, I didn’t know.
I also found myself pondering the preciousness of time. When undergoing chemotherapy, time drags and time gets lost. Every minute can feel like an hour, especially with itching hands and feet. But then, in contrast, days blur and merge into one. I’d wake up on a Friday and suddenly it was Sunday.
Sitting in London, having come through the other side, my appreciation of time had changed, and the only tick-tock I could hear was that of my time with Josh. He was now four and a half, about to start school, and I contemplated how fast the next fourteen years would fly by, and then I worried how many of those years I would get to share with him – I no longer viewed life as a guarantee that could be taken for granted.
Together with Gary, I wanted to be there every morning that Josh left for school, for every school pick-up, for every sport’s day, and for every Friday night dinner-as-a-family – the ritual that remains sacrosanct to this day. I wanted to invest my time in him, nothing else. The fact that my heart felt sad but not heavy at the thought of leaving the business told me everything. And the emotion I felt at the opening in Madison Avenue was still speaking to me, saying the same thing: ‘You don’t belong here any more. It’s time to move on.’
I knew I couldn’t hide this feeling of unrest from Gary for too long and, sure enough, one evening he noticed that I seemed subdued and asked what was wrong. I had been reluctant to say anything because our business had been his dream as well as mine. Once I aired my doubts, the genie would be out of the bottle, so to speak, and I didn’t know what the ramifications would be. Little did I realise that he, too, was feeling disenchanted. But, like me, he had been keeping his own counsel, not wanting to upset the apple cart so soon after getting our lives back on track.
The moment we uncorked our innermost feelings and talked them through, the more we agreed that the dynamics of the business had changed; it felt less ‘ours’ and more corporate all of a sudden. Maybe Gary, like me, viewed life through a new lens now; maybe cancer had taken the edge off things for him, too. Even as we turned our feelings inside out, we couldn’t really pin down one fundamental cause for this shift, but the bottom line was that we didn’t feel the same, and neither of us was one hundred per cent happy any more. We asked ourselves one question: ‘Is this the dream we still want?’ The joint answer was no. Once a confessional chat reaches that kind of admission, there really isn’t much more to know.
When we first struck the acquisition deal with Lauder in 1999, I think he and I thought it was forever. I know Leonard did, too. So when I telephoned him to say that we felt it was time to move on, I don’t think he saw it coming. He didn’t want us to leave – we did talk about alternative options to keep us involved somehow – but he knew what I’d been through and respected our reasoning. ‘As long as you have thought this through and you are sure?’ he said.
‘We’ve thought it through. It’s the right thing to do, Leonard,’ I said.
I put the phone down and I can’t say that I felt complete conviction in those words, but the decision had been made and I was determined to stick to my guns. It was time for a change, I told myself. I won’t regret this. ‘I won’t regret this,’ I kept thinking.
They would turn out to be famous last thoughts.
I had made the right decision for the business and for Estée Lauder but, for me, purely creatively speaking, as someone whose purpose in life is to make fragrance, it would turn out to be the worst decision I could have made. But that realisation would come later, with the benefit of hindsight, once there was more distance between me and my recovery. For now, two sets of lawyers would reconvene to activate a clause that had always existed as part of the original buy ou t – the clause that permitted my exit.
As in 1999, the first thing I did was ensure that the existing staff was kept on. My decision should have no bearing on their livelihoods, and Lauder respected that. With that guarantee secured, I gathered the team in our offices at the Old Imperial Laundry and broke the news. That was a tough day. We had shared the same pride in the brand. We had flown the flag from Walton Street to America and to the rest of the world. One employee begged me to stay. ‘Change your mind, Jo. Find a way. This company is you,’ she said. I felt the business pull on me. I felt every fragrance tug on my coat-tails. But I kept moving towards the exit door, believing I was doing the right thing.
My lawyer Jeremy came over to the apartment to run through the proposed exit terms, but he specifically wished to discuss one aspect – the ‘lock out’ clause that insisted that I couldn’t compete, or even work, in the industry for five years. ‘You have to understand what this means,’ he said. ‘You are literally locked out for a long period of time. No making fragrances. No involvement or association with any cosmetics or beauty business.’
In 2006, the year 2011 seemed an age away. Josh would be ten. I couldn’t even look that far ahead. ‘That clause is irrelevant to me,’ I said. ‘I won’t be building another business. I won’t be creating fragrance ever again.’
Had anyone asked me to place every penny I had on the square that said ‘Won’t be making fragrances again’, I would have shoved all my chips on to that promise.
I only ever had one moment of hesitation, and that was when Leonard came to London for a farewell dinner at Harry’s Bar, joined by John Larkin, the finance director, and Sally Sussman, the global head of communications. Leonard said some kind words about our achievement in building a brand that had gone global and, I won’t lie, as he spoke, painting a verbal montage of the previous few years, a little voice within me did ask, ‘Are you making the biggest mistake of your life here?’ But I dismissed it as a natural hesitation that sentimentality creates. Isn’t that the trickery of nostalgia, misleading us into believing that we can still have things as they used to be? Anyway, it was too late. The contracts were drawn up, the press announcement had been prepared, and all we had to do was add our signatures to the paperwork.
The formalities went ahead and, on 1 February 2006, the news was announced. ‘JO MALONE BOWS OUT OF HER OWN BRAND’ said Women’s Wear Daily in an article that noted the ‘personal challenges’ I had recently faced. But even the magazine’s journalist, Pete Born, wondered about my decision. ‘It is difficult to imagine Malone leaving the business. It is in her blood,’ he wrote. From what I have since learned, I think many in the industry felt the same way.
I didn’t find it easy to tear myself away, which was why I offered no comment to the media beyond a letter of resignation that was widely circulated to the press, and it seems right that I choose to rely on those words now to sum up my accurate feelings at the time: ‘After much soul-searching, I believe that this is a good time to make this decision as the brand is in a secure position and I have many other dreams and passions I would like to fulfil. Every moment of building this special business – from the first day we opened our doors through to today, and all the wonderful moments in between, has been a magnificent journey.’
On our last day in the Sloane Street shop, after tha
nking and saying goodbye to so many loyal customers, I counted down to closing time by walking through a few memories and honouring some hard-to-surrender retail rituals. The place where I lingered longest was the treatment room. I took a few moments in there, folding towels and stacking away some sheets as I remembered all the clients who had walked through that door after first trotting up the stairs to our flat in Chelsea. I then headed to the shop floor where I rearranged some gift bags beneath the till before restocking the shelves with fragrances one last time, making sure everything was perfectly in place for the next morning. I remembered how Gary and I had stood in Walton Street and watched the awning go up – the first time I’d seen my name above the door. It seemed odd to be leaving that name behind now and yet it also felt good to know that the heartbeat of the brand would keep ticking.
We turned out the lights and, a little under twenty years since launching the business with a portable treatment table and product carried in two holdalls, Gary and I walked away from Jo Malone London and everything we had created. But, as I would soon discover, walking away was one thing – letting go would prove harder to do.
TWENTY-FIVE
On the first day of the rest of my life, I rose as usual at 6.30 a.m., made a cup of coffee for Gary and me, and helped Josh get dressed, all the while pondering a gloriously free day, week, month, year. I didn’t have a shop to open, a fragrance to make, a meeting to attend, a flight to catch, or a problem to solve. Nothing. And ‘nothing’ felt strange. I can’t say that I had given much thought to this day so, when it arrived, I didn’t really know what to do with myself; it was perhaps the one occasion when I hadn’t written a things-to-do list, probably because there didn’t feel a pressing need to do anything. After walking Josh to school, a five-minute stroll from home, I stood and watched him go into class, and thought, ‘Now what?’
Out of habit, I took the phone from my pocket – it had never been so silent. Back at the apartment, I flicked open my diary and all I saw was white space and empty hours. White space and silence – that’s how I remember this time.
I stood in the kitchen, made another cup of coffee and, as the kettle boiled, my eyes spotted the letter on the fridge, from Josh’s teacher, announcing a ‘cake day’ that same week. I doubt there has been a time, previously or since, when the words ‘cake day’ had stirred such excitement. Before I knew it, I was wrist-deep in flour, caster sugar, butter and eggs, feeling a little proud of myself. I hadn’t made a proper cake since being a teenager and baking one each year for Mum’s birthday.
Previously, I had bought some M&S muffins and stuck Smarties on the top for my contribution for Josh’s school, but now I had the opportunity to channel my inner Mary Berry, bake a whole cake and be the star mum.
I carried on in this vein for the remaining four days of that week, going on food shops, running errands, and baking a tray of chocolate brownies as a treat for Josh. But I soon realised that all I was doing was clock-watching until 3.30 p.m., when it became time to pick him up again – and this was how it would be for months on end. Now, I acknowledge that for some people this kind of day is heaven but, for me, it wasn’t – a fact that was dawning a little too late.
I took a breath. Give it time.
Time – that thing I had said I wanted.
Not once did I doubt my decision to spend more time with Josh; my evenings and weekends with him would be endless fun, filled with precious memories that I wouldn’t swap for anything. My difficulty was not knowing what to do with myself in those vast chunks of time outside of ‘motherhood’, between 9 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. I hadn’t expected to feel so redundant. I hadn’t expected ‘freedom’ to feel so confining.
‘You’re bound to be restless,’ said Gary. ‘Relax. Let’s enjoy this time!’
He’d keep saying that and the more he said it, the more elusive being able to ‘relax’ became.
I’d hoover the house, polish the shelves and every piece of cutlery, reorganise the fridge and rearrange my wardrobe, finessing its colour co-ordination. I’d complete all the chores and errands by 10.30 a.m., leaving the apartment looking immaculate. I made the husband in Sleeping with the Enemy look messy.
Gary took up the guitar, and he’d practise morning, noon and night, but that only served to expose the fact that I had found nothing to engage me. We got a dog, Teri, and I swear she became the most-walked dog in the whole of London; by the end of our two-hour-long ‘walkies’ each day, I swear she was pulling me home. I indulged in some retail therapy. I filled my weekday diary with lunches with friends. I started running with Gary and we’d go for leisurely breakfasts afterwards, reading our newspapers in life’s slow lane. I loved doing all those things but these ‘treats’ now became daily occurrences. If it is Christmas every day, Christmas is bound to lose its appeal.
One month, I seemed to spend the entire time making ice cream, trying to see if my sense of taste was as effective as my sense of smell. The end result was a freezer filled with everything from Limoncello to orange blossom to beetroot ice cream; you name it, I tried making it. But inspiration didn’t bite. No matter how much I tried to keep myself occupied, I couldn’t shift a fidgetiness and frustration that felt more pronounced week on week.
Back then, I didn’t understand my inability to relax; in fact, it infuriated me that I couldn’t enjoy a well-deserved period of downtime like Gary could. There I was, in a privileged position, spending quality time with my family, with sufficient money in the bank, and yet the void felt cavernous. I wouldn’t blame any one for thinking: ‘You ha d a nice house in a nice area, and cash in the bank – you didn’t even know you were born.’ Trust me, I had that same chastising thought a million times. Yet thoughts and reality checks didn’t give me purpose. I needed to work, to create, to build something – that’s what I had been born to do. A musician wakes up and wants to make music. An artist wants to paint. I wanted to make fragrance, but I had taken myself out of the game. What a fool.
I can now see that I didn’t know how to stop. As a child, I learned to associate work and busyness with survival, whether that meant staying on top of the chores, or making face creams when Mum fell ill. As a teenager and young woman, I worked all hours God sent in order to stay afloat, first for Mum and then for myself. From then on, Gary and I had only ever built and kept building to secure our future together. Even dealing with cancer was a pursuit of survival. Every day, I’d had to fight for the right to live. I think that’s why the sense of redundancy was so instant. My psyche had only ever known life chasing goals, so when I suddenly stopped, my entire being wondered what the hell was going on.
The words of my lawyer Jeremy – ‘Are you sure you know what this means?’ – would return to haunt me more times than I can remember during the five years of my ‘lock out’. I had extended my wrists and put up no resistance to the golden handcuffs. I had been naive to think I would never want to create again, and I kicked myself for not paying closer attention to that one clause. I foolishly believed that I could turn off creativity, contrary to everything I had known in the past. But I realised too late that you can’t switch off your very expression in life. Day in, day out, I could find nothing that would hold my attention and make me feel the same way as fragrance.
Cancer hadn’t changed me as much as I thought.
Within weeks, as if to compound matters, my sense of smell returned stronger than ever, conjuring inspirations and notes that now had nowhere to go. The period of 2006 to 2011 felt like being lost in a wilderness, without bearings, without compass. I was a city girl who thought that camping without the proper equipment would be a good idea. And I came to my senses at the bottom of a cliff face, looking up, wondering how I’d fallen, and how on earth I’d ever be able to clamber back to the top.
One Saturday, while out shopping, I wandered into Harrods and was inevitably drawn to its beauty floor, aware that while my old brand had an in-store presence, it wasn’t housed in either the white hall (cosmetics) or black hall (fragrances) ei
ther side of the Egyptian escalators. I only visited places where there was no risk of our paths crossing – I wasn’t emotionally ready for that meeting yet. It proved hard enough walking around amid other brands and fragrances.
I can’t remember at which counter I stopped, but I picked up a face cream, undid the lid, breathed in its fragrance, felt its texture, and found myself welling up. I walked to another counter, and then another, asking myself the same questions that always came to mind when perusing any cosmetics floor: What would I add to that cream? What twist would I give that fragrance? What note is missing there? But those questions no longer felt like seeds of ideas; they felt like a barrage of torment, taunting me. I was in the kind of environment where I belonged but I could only participate as a consumer – and the regret slapped me across the face. I turned around and, with a quickening step, I hurried out into the street, cursing myself for ever stepping foot in there.
Creators – those whose heart and soul are invested in their product – will know the connection that stirred me that day, mainly because it reminded me that I had barred myself from doing the one thing I loved. The longer time dragged on, the harder that creative deprivation would feel.
My response to that visceral reaction was to do something proactive to try to shake off the feeling. I arrived home to find Josh running up and down the hallway playing with the dog. Gary was in the sitting room, strumming his guitar, learning a piece of music. I grabbed a pen and paper and sat at our long, oblong kitchen table at the back of the apartment, determined to get a job, because sitting around doing nothing was sending me stir-crazy.
That sense of desperation might explain the weird thoughts that led me to write down potential new careers: hairdresser – I had always imagined that if I couldn’t do fragrances, I’d learn to do hair, so maybe now was the time? Marketing – I knew about branding; someone was bound to value that. Working for M&S – I loved its food, so maybe this was a way to remain in retail? Building a vineyard – I loved wine, why not? Running and redesigning a hotel – on my travels, I had seen many great establishments and this could be a way of keeping my hand in the luxury industry.