There are few people in this world who know more about fragrance than Jo Malone. Having created hundreds of scents during her career, she’s back in London (she’s been living in Dubai for the last two years) to launch her most masculine fragrance to date, Jo Loves Black Cashmeran and Tonka Bean, out 5 September.

It’s a personal fragrance for Malone and really speaks to her current adventure in Dubai, a place she loves, and an exciting time in her life. In terms of finding a scent of your own – a signature scent if you will – Malone recommends fragrance blending rather than expecting just one fragrance to offer everything. “When I get out of the shower or the bath and my body’s still slightly damp, I will paint or spray my scent underwear onto my body. I let it dry, and then I get dressed. I love Jo by Jo Loves – I’ve got it on today. And then I play with four or five fragrances. Families will always sit together: citrus and citrus will always be happy together, as will floral and floral. This means that you can take your fragrance from day to evening, very easily.”

With her son at university and her company doing well, Malone moved to Dubai two years ago in a bid to find adventure. Having previously holidayed there, she loved everything about it, from the incredible red-orange of the sky at sunset to the view of the city from the old creek.

“Adventure has always found me. But this time I thought I could go and find it. I absolutely loved everything about it. I loved that moment where you’re sitting somewhere and someone would walk past you and you’d get this waft of cologne, like when you’re sat on the beach at sunset and smell tobacco. There’s just something very intoxicating about all of it,” she says.

Malone spent the first few months absorbing the culture of Dubai and the Middle East before deciding to step completely out of her comfort zone and start to create with a whole different head. She adds: “I started to look at notes in the region. Oud for instance, but oud has many families within it. Then I looked at a rum note, an alcoholic note and tobacco. It is so different from anything else I’ve ever done.”

Black Cashmeran and Tonka Bean has top notes of orange and ginger, middle notes of rum and tonka bean and base notes of cedarwood and cashmeran, and it’s the most masculine fragrance she has ever created, she says. “First of all, you’ve got the most beautiful orange, which is what I’m always known for, but it’s got this fresh ginger, which is giving sharpness and heat within it. A little bit of powdered cardamom, and then it moves to a tonka bean. It has a rum note – I’ve never used a rum note before – and as it dries down, it lingers, but we go down into a beautiful cashmeran. I don’t like vanilla so I can only use tonka. I don’t like the sweetness of vanilla but this gives you the black seed of the vanilla. They love vanilla in the Middle East and it’s the one note I struggle with.”

Malone believes that fragrance and nostalgia can be incredibly powerful. She recalls getting into a taxi in Dubai wearing Jo Loves Golden Gardenia. Halfway through the journey, the taxi driver asked what her scent was. When she told him, he replied that he had been living in Dubai for many years, but when he smelt that fragrance he was transported back to being a young boy again, back in his grandmother’s garden which was full of gardenias. “I nearly cried,” Malone says, “A man in his 80s, but I’d taken him back to his childhood and his grandmother who grew gardenias in the garden. Isn’t it lovely? Oh, it’s all those stories that keep you smiling and make it feel like life.”

Shop Jo Loves Black Cashmeran and Tonka Bean at JoLoves.com

Images: Getty; courtesy of Jo Loves