The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Lake Como. Villa D'Este. A hotel at the water's edge, surrounded by centuries of gardens and the particular stillness that only a northern Italian lake morning provides. Jo Malone has stayed there, and this fragrance is the result. Named for the place, With Love From Como translates a specific memory into scent: the first light on water, the smell of citrus trees in a garden, the quiet confidence of a destination that doesn't need to try hard. It joins a broader With Love collection from Jo Loves, each scent a love letter to a place that mattered. Como follows Positano. The geography shifts, but the idea holds: fragrance as postcard, as personal cartography, as proof you were somewhere worth remembering.
What makes this composition stand out is the pairing of tamarind and basil in the heart. Tamarind is rare in Western perfumery, more commonly associated with Southeast Asian cooking, where its tangy, slightly fermented sweetness anchors savoury dishes. Here it does something similar: it cuts through the citrus brightness with an unexpected tartness that keeps the fragrance from reading as a standard fresh scent. Basil adds a green, slightly medicinal quality that amplifies the effect. Together, they push With Love From Como slightly off-centre. It's not content to be merely pleasant. It wants to be itself: a citrus fragrance with a small, deliberate strangeness at its core that makes you lean in.
The evolution
The opening arrives crisp and immediate. Clementine, grapefruit, rhubarb, a trio that hits bright and tart, like biting into cold citrus fruit on a terrace. The rhubarb is the quiet workhorse here, adding a green, almost vegetable edge that stops the sweetness before it can settle. Around 20 to 30 minutes in, the hand-off begins. The citrus doesn't disappear, but it recedes, and the heart notes take over. Tamarind and basil arrive together, the tamarind bringing a sour, fermented quality that feels unexpected in a fragrance that started so clean. The basil adds a herbal sharpness that grounds the composition. By hour two, you're in the drydown. Cedarwood appears first, dry and slightly pencil-like, before the musk arrives to soften everything into something skin-close. The full arc holds for 4 to 6 hours on most skin, finishing intimate and warm, the kind of scent you catch on your wrist hours later and smile.
Cultural impact
With Love From Como is too new to have generated significant cultural conversation, but it arrives as part of Jo Loves' established With Love series, which includes Positano and London. The house's positioning as a sensory laboratory, curious, exploratory, uninterested in convention, means each release is treated as an experiment rather than a market play. The tamarind and basil combination in the heart is the most interesting choice here, pushing the fragrance slightly outside the fresh-citrus template that defines much of the genre.
