Jemimah Wright considers what is known of Jo Malone’s faith.
In a recent Sunday Times magazine interview with globally renowned perfume entrepreneur, Jo Malone, she spoke about how she met her husband on a Bible course. Jo and her husband, Gary Willcox, who now reside in Dubai, have been married for 40 years.
In the interview, after questions about her perfume house, Jo Malone, which she sold in 1999 for ‘undisclosed millions’; and later fragrance company, Jo Loves, she spoke about her early years; getting a job at a florist when she was 16 and moving to lodgings in Fulham.
Journalist, Audrey Ward wrote: ‘She hadn’t been raised in any religion but in her late teens she threw herself into Christianity. When she was 20 she signed up to a two-year Bible course [in Kennington]. “I didn’t have any friends in London and I thought that would be a good place to start,” she says, On the course she didn’t only find God, she also found Willcox, a surveyor from Beckenham. “I just thought, he’s so gorgeous, lovely and funny, and we fell in love with each other,” she says. They married a year after they met in 1985. Nowadays they are more spiritual than religious.’
When she was 20 she signed up to a two-year Bible course
The last sentence is hard to interpret. Either it means she has moved away for orthodox Christianity, and is open to other ideas, or she simply has a living faith with a living God, and is not defined by man-made religion.
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I would guess the later from her interview with The Independent in 2016. She said: “My faith is a very important part of my life. It’s my compass. When I talk about inspiration, innovation, integrity - these are elements inspired by my faith. I faced my own mortality. When I was going through chemotherapy there was a week when I thought I was going to die. There was no two ways about it. And when I sat by the bedside of my husband, who I thought was going to die, [in 2014 Gary suffered adrenal failure] my faith was what got me through. I wouldn’t impose it on anybody else, but it’s something that I choose to live by.”
She spoke of being told ‘you’ve probably got about nine months to a year,’ when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer
In The Times article she spoke of being told ‘you’ve probably got about nine months to a year,’ when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer when her son was three. He is now 24, and flourishing as a teacher. Jo is also evidently flourishing.
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Premier Christianity reported, ‘During an appearance at the 2015 HTB leadership conference the businesswoman recalled being prayed for by the missionary Jackie Pullinger when she was just 16 years old. In her self-titled autobiography, Malone explained: “When it came to my beliefs, I didn’t have any kind of lightning-bolt epiphany; it was something that developed gradually. The more you stand close to something, the more you sense its familiarity and that’s what finding God felt like: a faint voice in the distance that grew louder until it became sure and clear.”
In The Times article, Jo also spoke about vision for the future, saying. “I never had a gap year and left school at 15. We worked hard all our lives. And I thought I’m meant for something amazing in this world. There is something inside me that says there is such a big chapter in your life and you will leave a legacy to millions, and I haven’t achieved that.”
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Which is saying something for someone who has achieved so much already. Recently I was speaking to someone about vision. They said they felt when the vision and dream is about yourself, and your own success, it is from you, but when it is about others and for the benefit of others, it is from God.
With Jo’s dream seemingly being to leave a legacy to benefit others, it sounds like a God dream, and I wish her all the blessing and favour as God fulfils his purpose in her life. As it says in Ephesians 2:10 ‘For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’
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