An exclusive look behind the scenes at Matiere Premiere’s south of France HQ …
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In a constant deluge of new perfume launches, for me there’s one name that stands head and shoulders above the rest right now. Matiere Premiere is, technically, still a start-up, but it’s one that’s making serious waves. Founder Aurelién Guichard is a hugely experienced perfumer (he has created more than 100 bestselling perfumes, from Tom Ford’s Sole di Positano to Burberry’s recent Hero). His small but perfectly formed brand launched in late 2019 (three months before Covid hit), and is already stocked in over 50 countries, in destinations such as Galeries Lafayette, Harrods, Liberty, Selfridges and Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as Parfumarija in the Westbury Mall, Dublin. They are opening a store in Rue St Honoré in Paris in early 2025, followed by a store in London. Kering Beauté has taken a minority stake in the business this year.
So what makes Matiere Premiere stand out? Yes, having such an experienced perfumer behind it is one thing. But the focus is different, too. It’s entirely centred on ingredients – Matiere Premiere is the French phrase for raw material – and Guichard grows the key ones himself on his family farm in the Grasse region of France, a farm that has been in the family since 1700.
GRASSE ROOTS
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to visit these rose fields at harvest time (April), with Guichard explaining the processes, challenges and benefits of being able to pick your own ingredients. He is proud to be the only perfumer in the world to cultivate his own ingredients, notably Rose Centifolia, which is at the heart of his Radical Rose eau de parfum, and Tuberose, the central raw material of French Flower. Everything here is organic (Ecocert certified) – and everything is exclusively for Matiere Premiere to use. We sit drinking coffee in the shade of a huge tree outside the elegant farmhouse, and the laidback but passionate Guichard explains his take on perfumery.
“Matiere Premiere is about ‘field to bottle’ fragrances. When you grow up with raw materials, it’s a way to do things a bit differently. When you focus on the scent itself then you formulate differently, and you think more of ideas. When you take care in searching for raw materials, you have more choice, before even formulating. There’s a value for every ingredient – and a different olfactive quality depending on wherever it’s grown.”
Having this source of raw materials enables the brand to be both agile and innovative. For example, they launched a tuberose scent because the plants were ready. Since they produce some of the key ingredients themselves, they have control over quality. “When we use a lot of an ingredient it has good sides and bad sides – so we need to balance it and emphasise the beautiful side. We are observing each ingredient and trying to show all facets of it.” Additional key ingredients are brought in, from Madagascan vanilla absolute to Somalian incense, but always sourced with great care from other ethical producers, ensuring supreme quality and sustainable practices. “You have a responsibility to use an ingredient and support its producers.”
COMING UP ROSES
The first rose centifolia – some 12,000 plants – were planted here at the end of 2016. “Roses take two to three years from planting until harvest,” explains Guichard. The extraction process results in rose absolute, and one kilogram of absolute is worth around €16,000 (rose damascena is around €10-11,000). The pickers (who come to the fields every harvest, and have done for as long as Guichard can remember) pick up to 700 kilos a day. The fields are places of perfect peace and harmony, as the pickers move quietly through them, carefully dropping rose heads into the pockets of the aprons tied around them. The air is soft and warm, honeyed with a rosy, petally scent. You’d pack your bags and move there in an instant – it feels like a perfect balance of nature and industry, like something from a Brueghel painting.
Guichard’s perfume studio is also on site – he shares a space with his sculptor mother, and it’s a glorious creative space lined with bottles of various perfume oils and testing strips. We spent a magical afternoon smelling different oils and trying to guess them (surprisingly difficult) and then creating our own very basic perfume formula. I whacked in a load of patchouli with a dash of rose; pipetting expensive perfume oils into bottles is a slightly nerve-wracking and precise business, it seems, demanding patience (and a steady hand), not just creativity.
We share the testers over lunch outside (the freshest asparagus and salads, strawberries, coffee) and critique each other’s efforts, with Guichard being elegantly diplomatic about our creations (even scribbling an idea in his notebook at one point). We discuss favourite perfumes of our teens and I nearly fall off my chair as he mentions that his father, Jean, who we met working in the fields earlier, was the perfumer behind my own, LouLou by Cacharel (1987). Aurelien is a seventh-generation perfumer.
PURE & SIMPLE
The aesthetic of Matiere Premiere is deliberately clear and accessible. “What I love is the sense of observation about one ingredient – it’s a different way of creating a perfume. We focus on one ingredient and preserve its quality. The formulations are very linear – you know what you’re smelling. With something like Neroli Oranger, for example, there’s over ten per cent of pure absolute of orange blossom. They feel sophisticated but with a sense of simplicity – easy and gorgeous but with ultra luxurious ingredients. It’s about making fragrance easy to understand. There has been a huge loss of trust in perfume. The idea here is to trust the product – this is what drove us.”
This is really the antithesis of buying into a celebrity scent, which are usually presented in distracting bottles and with lavish, costly campaigns, often at the expense of the smell itself. These, by contrast, are all about one exceptional raw material per fragrance – such as the central velvety rose, the smooth Madagascan vanilla, the warm leather. Matiere Premiere’s top sellers are Radical Rose, Crystal Saffron and Vanilla Powder, which quickly shot ahead of the rest even though it only launched last October. And no wonder, as it’s a revelation, especially if you’ve steadfastly avoided vanilla scents until now, disregarding them as super-sweet. This one is delicious, almost edible – there’s coconut powder in here, along with Palo Santo wood and musks. It’s poles apart from those headache-inducing sugar-laced vanillas we’re used to. I love Guichard’s idea of a dark, refined vanilla made bright and brilliant with “an explosion of white modern powders”.
It’s worth noting that Matiere Premiere’s bath and body range is also superlative. I mention this because few perfume brands deliver when it comes to bath and body (Hermès is a key exception) – you usually end up with a pale imitation of the scent you love. Here the body lotions and shower gels (€45-€55 at Parfumarija) are exceptional, delivering the full impact of the perfumes; there are also hair perfumes (€60), which feature a lower concentration of the scent. Mini bottles – 6ml, as used by perfumers for testing – are available individually and in sets (discovery sample set with ten minis 1.5ml, €50): as a brand they encourage sampling, to really experience the scent properly and live with it before you commit to a full size, thus avoiding waste.
DEEPER & DEEPER
Guichard’s newest creations are the Extrait de Parfums, which he describes as “a deeper proposition.” It is all about “power and intensity”, with five new perfumes that feature a higher concentration of the central main ingredient, together with the addition of a “guest” ingredient to bring out a new facet in the star character. An Extrait version of Vanilla Powder (a bestseller since its launch last October) is on the way next year. I love the idea that these play around with existing ideas and intensify, rather than water down, the beautiful originals. It’s a bit like a music hit remix.
The Extraits
Radical Rose Extrait is centred on a rose that smells almost woody, peppery and spicy. This concentrated version, an overdose of rose Centifolia absolute together with saffron, pepper, cistus and labdanum, is joined by Immortelle, a flower native to the south of France. The aim, says Guichard was to amplify the rosy petal-ly impression with a key component of Immortelle, a Mediterranean flowering plant, which adds a bit more darkness and spice.
Crystal Saffron is about “creating comfort without being sweet” notes Guichard. In Crystal Saffron Extrait, a textured note of Somalian myrrh oil brings a “round richness” to the already vibrant and radiant saffron. This is a bright, luminous take on saffron with “very sensual myrrh oil driving the formula from the back”.
Santal Austral Extrait features black cardamom absolute from Nepal, which you won’t find in any other fragrance – it has been exclusively developed for Matiere Premiere. “Regular cardamom is more fresh and green,” explains the perfumer. “This is more smokey, very distinctive but not overwhelming.” It has that creamy, almondy smoothness but with an added spicy, woody intensity in the sandalwood. And if you wonder what the wife of a perfumer might choose to wear, this is it. This is an absolute blockbuster and if you had to pick one star from the line-up, this stunning sandalwood makes other sandalwoods look like pale imitations.
Ultra smooth and rich, Encens Suave Extrait highlights amber (made up of different resins) alongside the original key ingredient of incense oil from Somalia. Imagine a blend of frankincense, vanilla and coffee beans.
Falcon Leather Extrait is paired with oud from Bangladesh, “considered one of the most qualitative in the world, incredibly deep, dark and rich,” explains Guichard. The result is a true impression of leather that’s luxurious and textural, but not too animalic.
At £350stg each, these are investment scents. “Honestly speaking, it is impossible to make the same thing cheaply,” says Guichard. Having seen the process, from root to bottle, the commitment, expertise and passion behind this brand myself, I would prefer to save up and invest in one of these. These are scents with bold and brilliant impact that are made to last – I love a scent you can still smell hours later as the notes shift and change on your skin. And for now, they are strikingly individual. Discover them before everyone else does …
Matiere Premiere perfumes are at Parfumarija, Westbury Mall, Dublin 2. The Extraits are available online at www.matiere-premiere.com.
