by Alice-Claudia Gherman, photo archive Matière Première
The Matière Première universe is built around ingredients with a strong sense of identity, each perfume exploring a different facet of its signature raw material. In essence, Matière Première creates its perfumes around an overdose of a central natural ingredient, cultivated or selected for its singular power. Hence the name: Matière Première, which translates literally as ”raw material”, since concentrated raw materials are the signature of this French niche perfume house. The orchestrator of this entire narrative is the famous French perfumer, Aurélien Guichard, the visionary behind Matière Première’s creations.
Matière Première entered the international perfume market in 2019, founded by Aurélien Guichard alongside Cédric Meiffret and Caius von Knorring. Its first collection was launched in October 2019 and comprised seven perfumes: Bois d’Ébène, Cologne Cédrat, Encens Suave, Falcon Leather, Néroli Oranger, Parisian Musc and Santal Austral. Although not all of these perfumes were embraced by everyenthusiast, Matière Première immediately attracted attention with its new concept: perfumes built from concentrated raw materials and showcased in a distinctive way
Aurélien Guichard, the only perfumer to grow his own ingredients
The success of the collection launched in 2019 came gradually, driven by Aurélien Guichard’s vision. He possesses not only the secrets of the ‘alchemy of perfumes’, but also the rare opportunity to be the only perfumer to cultivate the very ingredients he uses as raw materials. Perhaps this is precisely what enabled him to create a form of perfumery that is direct, radical and ‘born from gestures and from the soil’.
Where others choose, Aurélien Guichard plants. Where many buy, he cultivates. Not anywhere but somewhere. He does it in his hometown of Grasse - the legendary cradle of traditional French perfumery, whose exceptional heritage has been inscribed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list. It was here, in Grasse, that from 2016 onwards Aurélien Guichard began restoring his family’s land, planting the first 12,000 Rose Centifolia bushes. His motivation was deeply personal: his grandparents had grown roses, jasmine and verbena. He feared that this precious family and local savoir-faire might one day be lost.
A passionate advocate of organic cultivation, Guichard had both his land and his rose crop certified by Ecocert. The choice of rose variety became one of the cornerstones of the Matière Première project. The cultivation started with 12,000 Rose Centifolia bushes and ended up with 15,000 roses, alongside tuberose and lavender crops.
Bold, Robust and Intense Scents
Perhaps the first six perfumes launched in 2019 did not enjoy the immediate commercial success one might expect from a mainstream brand. However, they established Matière Première firmly within the world of niche perfumery, building its reputation steadily and securing a strong, credible position in that area. Out of the six perfumes introduced in 2019, two stood out in particular: Encens Suave and Falcon Leather.
The former, a perfume made from blending incense, coffee, vanilla, benzoin and labdanum, was regarded as a remarkably fortunate and accomplished composition. The latter divided perfume lovers into two distinct camps: those who embraced it and those who did not. Those who were against Falcon Leather considered that it was simply too intense, too powerful - a strange, dark composition built around saffron, birch tar, labdanum, benzoin and oud.
Guichard oversees the entire journey, from plant to perfume. The roses are hand-picked in the morning over a period of approximately 30 days in May, then transported immediately to the nearby factory, where their extract is produced.
Radical Rose, Matière Première’s Breakthrough
The perfume with which Aurélien Guichard truly made his mark on the market, if we may put it that way, arrived in 2020 under the name Radical Rose. It played a pivotal role in establishing and defining the identity of Matière Première. More than any other creation, it is the perfume most intimately connected to Guichard’s own story - to his land in Grasse and to the Rose Centifolia cultivated there.
Guichard did not want to create merely ‘another rose perfume’. Quite the opposite: his ambition was to place as much of the raw material as possible at the very heart of the composition, then build the rest of the formula around it. Thus the concept of a ‘raw material overdose’ was born, which would go on to become the signature of the house. This is precisely where the originality of the perfume, and Aurélien Guichard’s genius lies.
Rather than allowing the rose to become simply one note among many in a complex composition, Rose Centifolia Absolue takes centre stage. Guichard surrounds it with saffron accents, in order to reveal its luminous facets. Besides that, other elements were used to add different notes to the perfume such as: Jamaican pepper for a spicy note, patchouli for a woody fragrance and labdanum for an ambered character
The result? A perfume that is at once luminous and dark, floral, spicy and woody - a bold and sophisticated composition with which perfume lovers have fallen head over heels.
Guichard oversees the entire journey, from plant to perfume. The roses are hand-picked in the morning over a period of approximately 30 days in May, then transported immediately to the nearby factory, where their extract is produced.
French Flower - A Portrait of Tuberose
The perfume that essentially continues the experiment started by Radical Rose was launched in 2022 and is called French Flower. As with Radical Rose, French Flower is created from organically cultivated tuberose grown on Guichard’s land in Grasse.
Guichard planted the tuberose in 2021 across approximately one hectare, reaching a total of over 50,000 bulbs today. The flowers are harvested at the end of summer, yielding two forms of extraction used in the perfume: Tuberose Absolute and Tuberose Enfleurage - a traditional technique in which the petals transfer their fragrance to a fatty substance. As his devotees have come to expect, Guichard builds French Flower around an overdose of French-grown tuberose. Matière Première describes the perfume as a counterpoint to Radical Rose: ‘fresh, luminous and sensual’.
With French Flower, Guichard has created a kind of olfactory portrait - a portrait of tuberose - designed to faithfully recreate the atmosphere one might experience beside a field of tuberose in Grasse, on a warm late-summer evening.
Metal Lavender - The Matière Première Story Continues
The fact that Aurélien Guichard did not stop at roses and tuberose is demonstrated by the latest perfume launched on the 1st of May this year: Metal Lavender. In fact, this new addition to the Matière Première collection takes the project Guichard began with his own crops in Grasse one step further. Its creation was made possible by the cultivation of lavandin alongside the other crops growing on his land in Grasse.
Therefore, Metal Lavender is the third Matière Première perfume built around an overdose of a single raw material. For this creation, the celebrated French perfumer uses approximately 10% lavandin, together with organic lavender from Haute-Provence, lavender absolute and lavender essential oil. The result? Metal Lavender is certainly not another traditional Provençal lavender cologne. Guichard had no intention of creating a classic ‘Provençal’ lavender, with a soapy impression, aromatic herbs and fougère character (the traditional combination of lavender, coumarin from tonka beans and oakmoss). Instead, he drew inspiration from the distilleries of Provence, situated close to the lavender fields. The contrast between the natural beauty of the fields and the cold, metallic structures of industrial distillation became the very concept behind the perfume.
To bridge the natural character of lavender with its metallic, mineral side, Guichard turned to cashmeran and musk, giving Metal Lavender its distinctive originality. Originality and controversy. Although it has been on the market for only a few months, Matière Première’s latest perfume has already divided enthusiasts into two camps. Some perceive Metal Lavender as modern and sensual, while others are more critical, describing it as overly synthetic or aggressive, with the metallic character overpowering the lavender almost completely. Some detect a cool, fresh lavender scent, as though they were smelling the plant itself, freshly picked from the field. Others experience the metallic facet: an abstract, almost technological sensation that seems to echo the increasingly industrial world we inhabit.
