My Story

by Jo Malone

  Come New Year, and having had the taste of being back on the department store floor, I knew that we’d have to find our brand a permanent home. But, as Gary said, we first needed more fragrances and ancillary products before we even started thinking about a shop. ‘Product, product, product, PR, PR, PR!’ he said. ‘Let’s give this six months and dedicate the time to getting our ducks in a row. Far rather get it right within the next five years than get it wrong within two.’

  And this time, I listened.

  In many respects, the following year was a period of re-evaluation. After our successful stint at Selfridges, more agents and buyers came to see us, exploring our readiness for entering into partnerships with other department stores, but my lesson had been learned – we needed to regroup and establish the true identity of the brand first, before taking it out elsewhere.

  I actually enjoyed the freedom and used it to create more fragrances – Pink Vetiver proved an addictive addition, as did the artistic Mango shot collection. I started to think of ways to present fragrance differently, and toyed with rebranding ideas, trying to figure out what we could look like if red and black didn’t fit and we couldn’t be cream and black.

  It’s important for any entrepreneur to realise that going back and putting things right is not admitting failure but guaranteeing success further down the line. I endlessly asked myself, ‘How can I put this right?’ ‘What do I need to do to make this a global brand?’ And there were times when I asked myself, ‘Do you really want this? Are you hungry enough for the second climb?’ The answer each and every time was a resounding yes – I hadn’t come this far to quit now.

  There are five heartbeats to a successful business: first, you need passion for, and pride in, your product – that’s inspiration; second, in daring to be different, you think of ways to stay separate from the herd and strive for originality – that’s innovation; third, you stamp your identity on everything you do as creators, without compromising who you are – that’s integrity; fourth, you put the foundations in place and create hunger for the brand, building momentum for the moment of lift-off – that’s ignition; and, lastly, you seize the moment by learning to tune in to and trust your gut, way more than you do the mind because the mind wasn’t designed to make decisions, the gut was – and that’s instinct.

  Five heartbeats: Inspiration, Innovation, Integrity, Ignition, Instinct.

  In my haste in 2011, I hadn’t applied three of those principles. I ignored my instinct, compromised my integrity, and turned the key when the ignition was inadequate. But, by the summer of 2012, we had started to see the hunger build as sales maintained an upward trend. I had also developed the ancillary products of body cremes, bath colognes, cleansers and body lotions. And now, seven months on from the Christmas at Selfridges, my instinct was flaring about our need for a shop; or at least to start the search.

  We could pull on the reins as much as we liked, and continue with our online presence, but if people didn’t know where I was, and couldn’t smell the fragrances, we were operating with one hand tied behind our backs. In beauty and cosmetics, when the sense of smell or touch determines sales, online platforms are only effective if the offline groundwork is done in tandem. The biggest mistake for any business is to become detached from the consumer, and, for me, that detachment could not have been more keenly felt than when operating via the ether of the internet.

  I remember standing in the ‘think room’, looking at our product-filled shelves, and it felt more like a perfume house reception than a shop. It felt like the fragrance equivalent of inviting someone to dinner without having a home to host them. And so Gary brought out his reliable clicker once again and started the search, both for new office headquarters and a prime retail location.

  Finding the bigger office was no problem – we moved around the corner to a building off King’s Road in Chelsea – but the perfect shop wasn’t so easy to locate, either because the clicker count wasn’t impressive or the leases were too prohibitive. After Walton Street and Sloane Street – premises that felt magical the moment we stepped inside – it was hard to imagine that we could be so lucky again, especially as the weeks dragged on. But Gary kept on being his optimistic self. ‘We keep looking. There’s a shop out there with your name on it and we’re going to find it.’

  As we looked ahead with the business, I would also face the saddest task of saying goodbye to my mum, dad and sister, who would all pass away within the space of eighteen months. At this time, the fact we had been estranged didn’t seem to matter; the sense of loss still felt profound, and it pained me to remember the bridges we hadn’t rebuilt.

  I remember sitting by Tracey’s hospital bed while she was in intensive care at the end of a long period of sickness and, as I held her hand, all I thought about was how much I wished things could have been different. I stood at Mum and Dad’s funerals and felt the same way, hoping that they knew, deep down, beyond everything that had happened, how much I loved them. And it was love – and forgiveness – that I chose to focus on in my grief, allowing the memories of our early years, however imperfect they may have been, to sustain me. I couldn’t change the past. But I could change how to frame it, without hurt, resentment or bitterness.

  I asked for one sentimental item of my parents, something that I could remember them by. I received Mum’s ornate letter rack with decorative leaves and a heart-shaped handle. It’s not worth anything but it used to sit on her desk and that’s where she kept all her notes and telephone messages; today, I use it to hold all my fragrance strips. And the one keepsake from Dad was a series of six watercolour paintings that he had done for me, placed into an envelope with my name on. I never knew he had done those paintings, and each one depicts colourful, antique perfume bottles. His way of capturing the art of fragrance.

  The fruitless search for the ideal shop continued and I thought we were never going to find anywhere until, that was, I had a catchup with Ruth Kennedy. A cup of coffee and a conversation with a good friend can often change our destiny or lead to a light-bulb moment, and that’s what happened when we met at her offices in Ebury Street, Belgravia.

  Over the years, we had shared many chapters of our lives, including our very different retail journeys. On this particular morning, I was moaning – and boring myself in the process – about the struggle to find a shop when she stopped me. ‘You know there’s a lease coming up in Elizabeth Street?’

  ‘No – where?’

  Five minutes later, after she had called the tenant, we were walking to the nearby street where I had first earned gainful employment as a teenager. We passed the cake shop, and then the flower shop where I was fired for throwing a bucket of water over the manageress. I shared that funny story as we kept strolling along, and then, up ahead – ‘No, it can’t be,’ I thought.

  ‘Here we are – it’s this one,’ said Ruth.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘This is where I worked when it was a deli!’

  We were staring in the window of No.42 Elizabeth Street – Justin de Blank’s mini-food hall that was now a fashion designer’s, selling kaftans, fabrics and textiles. I was standing in the spot where I had first started out. I don’t think Ruth could believe it either.

  As soon as we stepped inside, I got goosebumps. It felt like I had arrived home. The configuration was different – there was a downward staircase on the right and dark paisley-print wallpaper that made the space feel tighter – but my mind’s eye still saw everything as it used to be: Justin standing at the counter; Tom unpacking the fruit and veg; Roy the butcher having banter with a customer. At the back, where two girls typed away in an office, I could visualise the kitchen where I’d cut overgenerous slices of salmon. ‘I have to have this place,’ I told Ruth, pulling out my phone to call Gary. At that moment, I set my heart on No.42 Elizabeth Street.

  Gary started negotiating the lease but, as ever with commercial property, we had to wait for wh
at felt like an inordinate amount of time. All I seemed to ask him, day in, day out, was, ‘Are we close to signing yet?’ I don’t know which one of us wanted to finalise terms quicker: me, so that we could get cracking; or him, so that I would get off his back. I was like the annoying kid in the back of the car, repeatedly asking, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’

  From memory, there were several sticking points, not least of which concerned the building regulations in respect to the interior alterations we wanted to make. Throw in Gary’s haggling for favourable terms and it’s not hard to see why the process dragged on, but I started to believe that it wasn’t ever going to happen. ‘I’ll stop asking,’ I said, somewhat forlornly. ‘Just tell me if and when we get it.’

  On the morning of 5 November – my forty-ninth birthday – we maintained the tradition of gathering in the living room before Josh, now almost twelve, got ready for school. I lit candles. Gary made tea. We sat around in our dressing gowns as I opened my cards and presents. Later that afternoon, Gary joined me at the office. My head was down and I was concentrating on something when he walked in and placed a small white box on my desk. ‘An extra birthday present,’ he said.

  All around the office, the team stood, paying closer attention than they ordinarily would.

  Earrings, I thought. He’s got me earrings and everyone’s in on the surprise.

  I pulled the lid off the box. A single silver key rested on a bed of scrunched-up white tissue paper. My first thought was that he had bought me a car. But why would he buy me a car when he knows I can barely drive?

  And then the penny dropped: it was the best birthday present ever.

  ‘We signed? THE LEASE IS SIGNED?!’

  Gary’s grin was almost as wide as mine. ‘Time to go and be a shopkeeper again.’

  THIRTY

  As I turned the key in the lock, life turned full circle – the completion of a thirty-three-year journey that had brought me back to where everything had effectively started. Stepping inside those premises was like stepping into my past and future at the same time, walking Gary through the memory while simultaneously visualising what we were going to do with this empty space.

  There is something amazing about going back to a place where you first set out as an innocent teenager, only to return with a wealth of experience. I remember admiring Justin de Blank’s passion and pride in his shop, wanting to make it a special place for the customer; he unwittingly showed me the way long before I had glimpsed the possibilities of a career in retail. Now, there I was, standing in the shoes of the man who had taught me by example, with the opportunity of doing something special myself.

  Having had so much time to think, my vision for No.42 Elizabeth Street was clear: to showcase fragrance in an original way and do more than rely on tester bottles and blotter strips; to create an environment that looked different and felt different, where people could indulge the senses and linger in a creative space, not only browse and shop but savour an experience.

  I wanted to create a fragrance brasserie, complete with its own bar.

  When I had first mentioned the idea to Gary, his face was a picture. ‘A brasserie! We’re not selling food, darlin’!’

  ‘Not a bar where you come to eat but one where you come to smell,’ I said. ‘Think fragrance served in cocktail shakers, Martini glasses, velouté guns and big red bottles!’

  Gary says there was a reason I was born on Bonfire Night, ‘because when you start thinking about ideas, you’re like one of those unpredictable fireworks, and there’s no knowing which direction you’ll shoot off’.

  This experiential concept had its origins in both London and New York. One of my favourite things to do on a Friday afternoon was to take myself to the Harrods food hall and sit at the semi-circular tapas bar, enjoying a glass of wine and tapas. I’ve always been happy in my own company, sitting with my thoughts while I do a spot of people-watching, and I constantly observed how uniting the whole set-up was – lots of men and women on their own, savouring the tapas, engaging in conversation. All I could think about was how to recreate this little scene within the world of fragrance. ‘How could I use product in a tapas format?’

  Then came an evening in Manhattan, at the Four Seasons Hotel, when I watched a bartender turn cocktail-making into an art, creating elaborate drinks with a flourish. I noticed how people sitting at the bar never took their eyes off him as he grabbed vodka and added a shot of something, or poured the contents of a cocktail shaker into a Martini glass, drizzling the froth on top. He managed to make the presentation of alcohol and spirits entertaining.

  Over time, this combined theme of tapas and cocktails would inspire me in many ways, as well as influence different products, but the central idea it inspired was the brasserie – something that I knew would be an industry first. It’s not enough these days to have a bricks-and-mortar store and rely solely on product. Shopping has to become more of an experience, and that’s what I set out to create. Friends tell me that I like to think outside the box, and maybe that’s true, but on this occasion, I didn’t want to think outside or inside the box. I didn’t even want the box to be there. I wanted to open up a whole new arena.

  As Gary and I stood in the side doorway of the shop, in the same spot where Tom and I used to grab lunch, looking out into the alleyway, I outlined my idea in detail to the architect Martin Steele, who had joined us on this site visit.

  We were going to dispense with a standard retail counter and install a brasserie bar, offering a tapas-style menu to amuse the nose and scent the skin; instead of an amuse-bouche, an amuse-nez. Each customer would get to sample product by selecting three courses. The first course: a shot of bath cologne poured into a mini-tagine and served in hot water that releases a scented steam, to enjoy the fragrance as you would when taking a bath. For the second course, how about two shots of shower gel mixed in a cocktail shaker before being served on the rocks in a Martini glass with the resulting foam poured on top, creating the same froth as a shower? And for the third ‘dish’, the customer receives a shot of body crème from a velouté gun, whipped and sprayed on to a porcelain spoon before being painted on to the skin with brushes in an updated, and artistic, version of the hand and arm massage.

  There’s a quote from Maya Angelou that says, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ Nothing makes us feel and remember more than the sense of smell, so it was important that our flagship shop provide an immersive, unforgettable experience. Everyone remembers their first kiss, and I wanted to conjure that ‘first kiss’ moment with the brand, because falling in love with fragrance is rooted in first impressions, first feelings, first connections.

  The more Gary heard, the more onboard he was, but he had concerns about the bar fitting the floor space. When Martin took out his tape measure and we used a felt-tip pen to map out a rough shape on the floor, it’s fair to say that things didn’t look encouraging. But instinct sent me over to the left side of the shop and I tapped the wall, recalling the precise layout thirty-three years on.

  ‘This wall goes back a bit. Pass me that,’ I said, pointing to a screwdriver on the ground. I dug into the plasterboard and, sure enough, there was a gap that must have been three feet wide. ‘Take this wall back and we can have a brasserie.’

  I always did like to push the boundaries.

  I stepped into the middle of the floor and faced the rear of the premises. ‘And those offices can be a creative studio.’

  ‘What’s going to be in the creative studio?’ asked Gary.

  ‘Something amazing,’ I said, throwing him a wink. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘More money then?’ he said, raising his eyebrows knowingly.

  ‘Yup. And we’re going to start the rebranding process, too.’

  ‘Wonderful – even more money. Do you even know what that rebranding looks like?’

  ‘I have a few ideas,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’m still working on
them.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ he said.

  Due to the usual red tape and not inconsiderable design snags, it would take another nine months before we opened, but at least that provided ample time to ensure everything was perfectly executed. One morning, in the spring of 2013, while Gary and I were having yet another site meeting, one of the builders handed me a folded piece of paper. ‘A lady came by and left you this note – she asked that you call her when you get a chance,’ he said.

  I didn’t recognise the number or the name ‘Michelle’ but I called her that evening – it was Justin de Blank’s wife. When we talked, it transpired that she had no idea that I had previously worked for Justin. The reason for her note was that he had passed away, at the age of eighty-five, a few months earlier in the December. ‘Would it be okay to come and have a look at the shop?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, any time,’ I said.

  I understood that the place held many memories for her, too.

  A few days later, we shared some of those memories over a cup of coffee, which seemed fitting in the weeks leading up to opening. Justin had been a part of my journey, and, in a small way, through Michelle, through reminiscing, I was able to express the ‘thank you’ I hadn’t been able to say to him personally.

  Dreaming up the concept for the brasserie was the easy part; the design would prove to be a little more challenging because I was essentially looking outside of the industry for my inspiration, and it mattered to me that it felt authentic, not gimmicky.

  Fortuitously, when Gary and I attended a black-tie charity dinner at the Roundhouse, I found myself sitting next to Jeremy King, one-half of Corbin and King, the partnership behind restaurants such as The Wolseley, The Delaunay, Café Colbert, and Brasserie Zédel. Step into any one of those establishments and you’ll see why these two visionaries know everything there is to know about brasseries.