Sonakshi Khosla

British perfumer Jo Malone CBE did not have a conventional route into the world of luxury fragrance. She grew up on a southeast London council estate and by the age of 11, was the sole breadwinner for her family, making and selling face cream and oils. She founded Jo Malone London in 1990, which she sold to Estée Lauder in 1999. She remained as creative director until 2006, having battled through breast cancer in the early noughties. Now, she is the founder of a second perfume brand, Jo Loves.

Malone attributes her success to taking chances. “Risk throughout my life has been a constant, and still is,” she says. “Life is a risk. If you don’t take risks, you’ll never know how strong you are. You’ll never know how resilient you are. You’ll never push beyond those boundaries and have adventures.”

Malone recently took part in our Readers Ask series, where industry specialists answer questions from you, submitted through the Telegraph Recommended community. The topics were wide-ranging, covering everything from her role as a “super sniffer” and her favourite scents, to advice to young entrepreneurs.

What inspired you to start creating fragrances? Henry

My sense of smell is extraordinary. I could smell if it was going to rain or snow or if the dog was sick. My mum was in the skincare industry, so I would smell if she was making face creams or face masks, and I could tell the oil used by my sense of smell. As I got older, that sense of smell became bigger, and I started to understand that I had an incredible gift.

I also have something called synaesthesia, where my brain is wired slightly differently, probably because I’m severely dyslexic. You see the colour red, but when I see it, I also hear music and can smell the slight skin of a raspberry or a strawberry.

What do you draw inspiration from? Sue, South East

Life. I love sitting in a coffee shop with my notepad and watching how people behave because human behaviour and creativity walk side by side.

Take ‘Jo Loves Pomelo’. I was walking down the beach on an island in Turks and Caicos and suddenly, I saw a baby stingray with little fluttery eyes. I looked around and saw blue skies, white sand, white rolled towels and a glass of fizzy iced lime water. I could smell the broth cooking in the local brasserie. I took each of those moments and connected it back to a fragrance note. That’s where Pomelo was born.

Inspiration is so near to you. But you don’t own creativity, it just whispers in your ear and says, “Follow me up the beach, Jo”.

What is your favourite fragrance in nature? Peter, London

This is almost impossible for me to answer because I have so many. I love the smell of the early morning, the salt in the air by the beach. Every morning, I close my eyes, I breathe it in and I know that the day is going to be positive.

One of the fragrance notes I love is orange blossom. Anything to do with orange blossom, petitgrain, neroli, orange flower water… It is the most amazing kind of note.

When coming up with a new fragrance what is your starting point? Eleanor, South East

In my head, I have a library with all of these fragrance notes. I see it as a big, spiral staircase and it goes up and up, and around it are all these shelves with bottles or things on.

Each one is a memory; a walk in the park, riding my horse, lying on a cashmere blanket in the middle of the desert. I pick those bottles, smell them and start to add it to the fragrance. Each one is a story, each note is words, music or touch.

Then you put together what’s called accords. They’re often single notes, and I’ll take them and twirl the papers round and round. Do they match? Are they a disrupter? Are they a magnet? Do they want to draw and control everything in that fragrance?

If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be? Ali, South West

That’s impossible. I love creating, I love smelling fragrances and I love accords.

But, if I could only take one bottle, it would be ‘Jo by Jo Loves’. I created that many years ago and it’s the story of my life through the ingredients of grapefruit, pomelos, lime and citrus. It reminds me to remember who I am. It was the second business I built and a part of my life where I was really trying to discover again who Jo was.

Or, it’s always the one I’m currently creating. So at the moment it would be ‘Sunkissed Orange’, the code name of my current working project.

What was the biggest risk you took that defined your career and what did it teach you? Andrew, East of England

I think one of the biggest risks was opening our first shop in Walton Street, 32 years ago. My husband and I had this tiny pool of money for rent and for products and all we could think about was “Can we survive?”. And within five years we’d sold that business, so it paid off.

Then, I left Jo Malone London in 2006 and I had a five year lockout, so I was non-compete. After those five years, an opportunity came to me and I missed fragrance so much that I decided I wanted to take it, but that was a risk.

Just because you’re successful once in your life, it doesn’t give you the right to be successful again. You have to go from the ground, and let me tell you, the first two years of building Jo Loves were torturous. I lost lots of money. I got it all wrong.

But often when you take risks in business and you push through, you build business muscle and find different solutions. Never be frightened of risk. It’s always going to come, but we have to push on.

What is one piece of advice that you would give to a young person today, setting out in the world of work? Andrew, East of England

Well, it’s going to be an adventure. I left school at 15 years old. I have no qualifications. I had a whole heap of dreams, I set to work and I have built and helped build great global brands. When I was 15 to 16 years old, my first job was in a florist. I never wasted any opportunity to learn something. Learning that you don’t like something is often as valuable as knowing you love it, because you can eliminate a lot.

Surround yourself with people that you find creative and inspiring and learn from them. If you don’t know how to do it in the beginning, mimic them. Mimic some of their thought processes and conversations. Listen to every word. Read stories of other entrepreneurs.

The next question will probably be: “Well, I don’t know whether I’m an entrepreneur?” You may not be, but you have an entrepreneurial instinct, because the minute you were born, you were born to learn and be creative.

Do you think humans will always invent scents or is there a world in the future when new technology or AI might invent them? Mave, South East

I don’t use AI to necessarily create, but to investigate and to find ingredients. What it cannot do at the moment is create something that’s in my head that has never been created before or talked about.

There’s an incredible thing about using the sense of smell and AI not just to create scents, but to detect diseases, like diabetes, epilepsy, pseudomonas, and Covid. I’m involved with a wonderful charity called Medical Detection Dogs, where I’m known as a ‘super sniffer’. I have a sense of smell similar to a dog, which is probably one of my proudest titles. These dogs have taught us how we can detect.

Now, working with AI, you’ll be able to go into hospitals in the future, or get on a plane, and an AI will be able to detect if there is something that is contagious. This is a way for us to work together and make this world a better place.

What are the most effective ways to create ‘eco-friendly’ luxury without sacrificing the complexity of the scent? Is it using more expensive ingredients? Kirstyn, East of England

I think the more single something is (an accord), the more perfect it has to be. A lot of the fragrance houses I work with give back. We plant, we make sure that we’re taking from this world and that the next generation still has those things.

Some of the most expensive ingredients in the world, we can no longer use. Things like ambergris [which comes from sperm whales]. It’s not eco-friendly and I wouldn’t want to use it because you need to kill the animal. We can artificially create things like musks, which is much better.

As an older man, what would be the best base for an aftershave? Would bergamot, sandalwood or citrus last longer than others during warmer weather? Thomas, North East

This is such a sweet and lovely question. My father used to wear Guerlain’s Vetiver, for instance, or Christian Dior’s Eau Sauvage. They were different fragrances, but there was a heart of citrus and the vetiver was quite creamy. All of these old, almost Chypre-type colognes have that wonderful citrus element and then they dry down to these beautiful woods.

I was sitting outside Scott’s in Mount Street in London having a coffee, and this gentleman walked by. He must have been in his 80s, and he was immaculately dressed. He had a beautiful grey suit on and he was smoking a Gitanes cigarette. As he walked by this, this smell of a wonderful, classic cologne went past me. I sat there and it transported me to spending time with my father. So, I would say citrus and woods together are pretty dynamic.

I love Diptyque Philosykos, as well, that’s a good fragrance. And at Jo Loves, we do one called ‘Cobalt Patchouli’, created from that moment when the gentleman walked by.