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 .
“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.
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 and then creating our own very basic perfume formula.
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.