When choosing a perfume, I always tend to look for a minimalistic logo or feel. Matière Première fits that perfectly. First, there’s the scent. Fields of roses in May, picked by hand under the southern French sun. Tuberose in September, its perfume at its most intense after dusk. Saffron threads gathered in a Greek valley, glowing the colour of late afternoon light. At the maison, every fragrance begins with one raw material, and lets it bloom.
Perfumer Aurélien Guichard knows these ingredients like family. His grandparents grew verbena, jasmine and roses in the south of France, surrounding him with scent from an early age. That background stayed, even after two decades working with raw materials around the globe. In 2015, the Guichards planted their own rose farm in Grasse. Ten thousand bushes soon became twenty thousand, and the rose absolute became part of the family identity. Everything is grown and transformed in-house. “It’s all real, and a family business, and I wear where I work on,” Aurélien says, smiling to a small group of journalists in Amsterdam.
The turning point came when friends Cédric Meiffret and Caius von Knorring visited the estate. Long conversations about scent led to a simple idea: build fragrances around a single raw material, and give it a distinctive “overdose”. Matière Première launched in 2019 with Crystal Saffron, followed by creations that push their hero ingredients to the limit. Moving from eau de parfum to extrait de parfum lifts the concentration from 0.1% to as much as 10%, creating richer, longer-lasting scents. Here, luxury is skill and community driven.
From the outside the maison shows pure French refinement with sleek bottles and boutiques in Paris and Saint-Tropez. Behind it are three friends, a family rose farm, and the kind of craftsmanship that deepens my olfactive affection. In this case, with Vanilla Powder, the new extrait de parfum launching in October.
Image taken by author, courtesy of Matière Première.
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