Jo Levin
Jo Levin never set out to become a perfumer. For years, she was one of British fashion's sharpest editorial minds, serving as creative fashion director at GQ where she shaped how an entire generation of men presented themselves. The fragrance bug bit accidentally, around the early 2000s, when she stumbled on a sunlit aquatic perfume oil during a trip to the United States. She started layering it over her rose shower gel at home, tweaking ratios until the combination felt entirely her own. That private ritual eventually became the seed of OdeJo, launched in 2016 as an exclusive at Harvey Nichols. To bring the formula to life, Levin partnered with Jeff Lounds, the nose behind Escentric Molecules, lending her intuitive, editorial eye to a collaboration rooted in personal taste rather than perfumery school. Though she trained on the job in Grasse workshops and through hands-on development with Lounds, Levin's real qualification remains decades of living with scent and editing down to what feels essential.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Jo composes
Levin's signature leans toward clean, optimistic compositions with a watery, sun-drenched character. Aquatic accords sit at the heart of her work, softened by florals like rose and grounded in skin-like, subtle bases that avoid heaviness. Her debut OdeJo captured that sensibility with bright, breezy facets designed to feel as natural in summer as a white shirt. She prefers sheer over dense, radiance over projection, and formulas that read as effortless rather than constructed. Working alongside Jeff Lounds gave her fluency in modern minimalism, the Iso Gamma Super or similar skin-close molecules that make a scent feel less like a statement and more like a second skin. Her aesthetic vocabulary borrows from fashion editorial: uncluttered, considered, and ready to be worn by anyone who picks up the bottle.
Philosophy
What drives Jo
Levin approaches fragrance the way she once styled a fashion page: with a clear point of view and an instinct for subtraction. She believes the best scents are the ones you reach for without thinking, the bottle that earns a place on the bathroom shelf rather than the display shelf. Her creative process is instinct-led and deeply personal. She starts with a memory or a feeling, often an everyday moment, and works backward into the bottle. Collaboration matters to her; she trusts the perfumer's craft but insists on staying close to the final composition. She has described OdeJo as a shareable scent, one designed to be recognized on someone else at a dinner and asked about. For Levin, fragrance is an extension of style, an invisible accessory meant to be worn confidently rather than decoded.
The houses