Jo Malone

**Jessica Harris** (0:06)
I'm Jessica Harris, this is From Scratch. My guest is the perfumer Jo Malone, who launched her first company, Jo Malone London, in a retail shop in 1994 in London. The company was sold to Estee Lauder in 1999
Jo launched her second company, Jo Loves, in 2011, and runs the company with her husband, Gary Wilcox.
She is the author of Jo Malone, My Story. Welcome.

**Jo Malone** (0:32)
Thank you.

**Jessica Harris** (0:33)
So, I want to start with white doves and rabbits. What comes to mind?

**Jo Malone** (0:40)
A little bit of a magic. My father was an amazing man, very creative. And I think that's probably where I get a lot of my creativity. And I'm very comfortable around the uncomfortable side of creativity, the obscure and the left and right. But he was brilliant in three things. He was an architect.
He was a magician.
But he was also a gambler, which wasn't so nice. So those three things were very eclectic. But he was part of the magic circle. And I would go with him every weekend when he would do private magic shows.
And my pets were not hamsters or guinea pigs or goldfish. They were white magic rabbits, neverland dwarf rabbits. So they appeared from hats. And my best friend was a little white dove called Suki. He would sit on my shoulder. And I adored her.

**Jessica Harris** (1:28)
And you grew up in Southeast England in a council house estate, which basically is the equivalent of public housing.

**Jo Malone** (1:34)
Yes.

**Jessica Harris** (1:35)
How would you describe it?

**Jo Malone** (1:36)
Yes, it's just like subsidized housing. So the government subsidized it. And we were in a little two up, two down, two bedrooms and two downstairs.
And we paid rent to the council. And my father at the time worked for a double glazing company.

**Jessica Harris** (1:50)
What is a double glazing company?

**Jo Malone** (1:52)
Where you slide things across the window. So two pieces of glass.
And he worked for, as the architect.

**Jessica Harris** (1:58)
And your mother was a facialist.

**Jo Malone** (2:00)
Yes.

**Jessica Harris** (2:01)
Did you have a sense when you were growing up in this community that you had abundance? Or what was your view of yourself and your family?

**Jo Malone** (2:09)
I wouldn't describe my childhood as an abundance of things and luxuries, or food actually, but an abundance of life creativity that I had bundles of. As brilliant as my mom and dad were, I was the adult from the age of 10 So I would always be the one that went to the fridge to see where the next meal was. And I'm still like that today. I still have to always look in my fridge to see three meals.
But in saying that, I saw two parents that worked very hard and tried very hard.
They had a difficult relationship. And as two children, you're caught sometimes in the middle of that. But I nevertheless loved them and respected what they did. But my childhood was very much, I learned to make face creams very early. I learned to work market stores with my father because I had to put finance. I knew that made money.

**Jessica Harris** (3:02)
Your mom was a facialist. And from a very early age, you were with her mixing scents and experimenting with fragrances. She worked for this woman, Madame Lou Badie.

**Jo Malone** (3:13)
Oh, she was so amazing. She was six foot, blonde hair. She used to do yoga morning, noon, and night. Very sort of long-limbed, blood red lipstick, fishnet tights, and a long white lab coat. And she spoke with a very deep voice like that. And I literally loved her. And I watched this woman make these face creams and these masks, and I'd watch her. And because I'm dyslexic, I mimic a lot of what I do.
One day, she handed me a pestle and mortar, and she handed me two bottles and said, can you make this face mask?
I can close my eyes and I'm right back there, and I made my first face cream. And I fell in love. I knew that was what I wanted to do.

**Jessica Harris** (3:55)
You left school at age 15

**Jo Malone** (3:58)
I did leave school at 15 And I left to look after my mom who was sick at the time. She'd had a terrible breakdown. So that was, you know, one of those moments.
And I left and my first job was just at the age of 16 I went to work in a flower shop.

**Jessica Harris** (4:13)
And a deli, you had a job in a deli?