Journal
A collection of journals, exploring the world of fabulousness.
Featured
I arrived in New York City in 1997 with a suitcase and determination and in 2007 I arrived back in the United Kingdom after 10 illustrious years in the United States. In that year I started the first Jonathan Ward vision and two weeks after we launched the stock market crashed. So there I was at the beginning of my attempt to show the world my creations and the world was fiscally fumbling around me. Fast forward to 2014 and my world was flailing also.
Thrilled to have stirred interest from a girl with soul. Lovely Laura Pearson Smith. Laura has written for Metro, Marie Claire and presented on the BBC (amongst many others) and has a lifestyle blog sharing her genuine passion for the beauty industry.
I think that the biggest change and the most distressing is sadly how monetized the industry has become. We have the ever evocative topic of influencer that seems to pop up at every industry dinner I attend. It’s the one part of the change that I find slightly disarming. You cannot rate the true value of a product by paying someone to say to their followers "this is good", "this has value", "now where is my paycheck".
We decided to extend our a little candlelight hospitality to Hackney's local bloggers and writers. Just to reach out and say, you know, we are here. Not much has changed in the journalist and blogging world as quite a few invitations went unanswered. Anyway, fuss aside, the invites pricked 8 pairs of ears and as 4.30 approached, candles were lit, sandwiches were buttered and figs were cut.
Halcyonic, the collaboration aroma for Victoria Baker-Harber & The Space Miami. Halcyonic is a conceptual fragrance denoting the early days of the roaring ’20s, a period of happiness, frivolity, and where everyone had a thirst for life.
July is always an interesting month in the fragrance world. It’s the beginning of the new, the start of the end, and the art of silence. Let me explain.
Always the quietest month of the year for candle brands. The heat typically sees a disinclination to bring more heat into the home. I have to be honest as the consumer and the designer, it never stops me from enjoying the beautiful burn of a candle. However, the pace has not slowed down for our small team.
What a treat. At the end of a busy workday, I glanced at my phone and Twitter was demanding my attention. The Independent Lifestyle supplement @IndyBest had called in a Jonathan Ward candle a few months ago and naturally, we had forgotten it had ever been requested. I read the article diligently and it made me so so happy to be voted number two from the final edit of ten candles (from who knows how many they received).
I called this post, skin deep as we are at an interesting juncture in the cosmetics, fragrance, clothing world.
I don't think a day goes by where the people I subscribe to on my social media channels, don't post something related to the gargantuan rate that we are consuming clothes and cosmetics, (let alone the gargantuan waste) and how change needs to happen. Yesterday Zara rolled out its vision for the future with sustainable fabrics at the forefront of its agenda and a new way of shopping digitally with less waste.
It's hardly a revolutionary statement to note that art can be displayed across multiple mediums. Our chosen vehicle for our artistic statement is the aroma. Carried by molecule(s) in an aerial expression the statements sail into their designated space by flame, by stick, by spray, and by touch. In the middle of a particularly quiet June, we were quite thrilled when our expressions were requested to perform their aerial dance down on Dover Street at The Arts Club.
There's a chill in the air. There's a notion in my mind, that the wardrobe will need to be changed quite soon to easily access knitwear, long sleeves and jackets. During the recent heat-wave in the UK, admittedly we didn't light too many candles as the diffusers had just launched. We made them, but we didn't light too many.
As a candle maker, we intrinsically know this is our time. The move towards colder climates just naturally inspires (for us Brit's) more tea, more knits and yes, candles.
I was reaching back in the memory bank and carousing memory lane. It was 1993, I had just received an acceptance to Kingston University and my life was about to change in quite significant ways. Readying myself to leave Newcastle for my University years in London, it was a time of excitement, anticipation and exhilaration.
My life looked very different then. My daytimes were spent drafting, drawing and sewing in the modern design studios at Newcastle's art facility. My evenings were spent working in an Italian restaurant to fund my daytime activities or putting pencil to paper working on my future.
The first blog of 2020 shines a little light on an interesting conversation that I had while doing an event in December.
It was a Saturday afternoon, crowds were swarming, chaotically choosing Christmas gifts (not necessarily based on careful choices). I struck a conversation with a girl and as I guided her through the fragrances, I noted her reactions to my scent descriptions.
The year started with an interesting twist in our business development. Over the Christmas holidays I took a short break at New Year to skip out of town and visit Riga in Latvia. In an odd twist of affairs, I attended a Great Gatsby themed New Year "affair" and ended up seated next to someone that professed to have psychic abilities.
On Tuesday the 17th March, we proudly put forward our new vision to the beauty and fragrance press in a launch that was to be the final launch for the foreseeable future.
Assassin Belarus was the culmination of five months work and development. It started in October as a fleeting observation. I passed by a man that smiled and it occurred to me that we can be blithely unaware of what could be hidden under a smile. A simple smile or laugh, when out of visibility, can belong to someone who retreats to a darker world. It was from this point that the idea of exploring the covert world of espionage seemed just too enticing not to explore.
With ample spare time in the wake of our current global position, I wanted to offer a little insight inside the choices we made as a young niche brand.
The world has changed. All industries will likely shape their marketing approach rooted in new values.
When you're busy and caught up in busyness, it can be difficult to see the truth. In times of adversity the lens that you look at the world through becomes crystal clear.
This is potentially a contentious and provocative issue to embrace, making it quite delicious to open the olfactory pantry door upon...
Unless you've been living on Jupiter for the past fifteen years, it would be difficult not to have noticed a significant shift in the home fragrance industry. When I commenced my journey into the home fragrance world, it was quite different to the picture today. There were 6-8 powerful brands that had global presence. Now there are over 150.
We're entering week seven of staying at home. Trying to keep the momentum going on the wheels of our beautiful business, I go into the studio two days a week and try to stay positive, but all 77 studios are closed. The entire community is at home and its a strange feeling being present in an uninhabited building.
Interestingly, on Sunday I spoke to my distributor in Korea and life in Korea has returned to some normality. Restaurants are open again with the restriction that there should be no crowding. Not to be macabre, but Korea acted so quickly in handling the pandemic lockdown and in a country of eighteen million people, 242 fatalities. Compared to the 20,000 tragedies in the UK. I think we will leave that subject right there, as I don't need to open a political pandora's box. Let's keep this candle content pure.
If you're a continued follower of the Jonathan Ward brand, you will have a sense that we strive for transparency. You have to share the ups and the downs, if you wish to remain rooted in truth.
Each day we continue to tackle the new reality for our business during the COVID catastrophe. I felt an itch to share a little insight into the actual support for niche businesses like mine.
A new chapter begins.
One of the gifts in enduring lockdown, is the ability to shift focus onto the creative endeavours that the pace of everyday life doesn't allow. The extra headspace and a little boredom shifted my focus to think about the future. What will the next evolution of Jonathan Ward be ?
We will release out first official fragrance for the Jonathan Ward Brand in September. Yes, it is official. I have been asked and asked and I answered.
Over the years, I have learned that when you are confident in your own worth, the pathway through life becomes remarkably less burdensome.
Have you ever noticed when you read a review on a new restaurant venture, a new album or a writer's latest novel, critics can be enthralled and thrilled or acidly disappointed. After all it's a personal review in the context of their longstanding industry experience. Personally, I love reading genuine reviews on all genres of culture and life (when we had it!). You can crave a particular writer's style and wit, appreciate their clever metaphors and laugh as you connect to the creation that is under the spotlight.
It is with a harrowing sadness that while we steer the tragedies dispersed from the Covid pandemic, a spotlight has recently been placed on another profoundly tragic issue. One, that has affected a much greater number of individuals (for decades) and is impossible to collate accuracy on it's victim count (past and present).
I had a deeply upsetting conversation with a friend from America last week and it was not a topic we had broached before. Racial injustice. Let me preface this by saying that I had always been under the impression that my world has always been inclusive and my social perspective encompassing. At the end of our talk I realised that there is a profound difference between "non racist" and being "actively anti-racist". The first passive and the second requiring action.
It was another enthralling Friday night in the middle of April and I was having one of my (correct me if I'm wrong Stephan...) a 3 hour phone call talking about everything that we "weren't" achieving during lockdown.
There were mentions of overindulgence in our culinary creations, late night media indulgences and how we see our beauty and perfume industry changing under the new world that we were experiencing.
Ever the perfectionist. We concluded our soft launch from November in February. Since then we have reworked the Jonathan Ward packaging. Instead of printing a solid colour on white stock, we opted for a pre-flooded pulp by GF Smith.
Fragrance design is quite a different discipline and design process to fashion. Fashion is the quest for the new and change. Fragrance can be a long development process but when you get it right, it stays. It transcends season and trend. It bypasses fickle and fleeting and traverses its own line. Quite often I am asked about memories from 10, 20 even 30 years ago. I can always remember the scent but the fashion moment has gone.
I took this image weeks ago and it seemed perfectly correct for an article about transparency.