MATIERE PREMIERE.
The first thing you notice in Grasse is the smell. The crisp air and the freshness of damp soil beneath your feet, crushed leaves crunching underfoot – it’s invigorating. Then something deeper and more vibrant draws your attention as the temperature rises and roses begin to unfurl slowly. Up in the hills of Grasse, in the south of France, around 30 kilometres from the perfume capital itself, the fields of MATIERE PREMIERE stretch across the landscape, rows of Rosa Centifolia blooming beneath a pale blue Provençal sky. Ahead of the season’s peak harvest, Schön! travelled to the French countryside to experience the process first-hand, joining the pickers in the fields as the house gathered the Rosa Centifolia that forms the backbone of its cult ‘Radical Rose’ fragrance.
At 8 a.m. sharp, the pickers begin. During the harvest season, which runs almost exactly from early May through to early June, the rhythm of the rose fields becomes strangely precise. Buds that remain tightly closed at sunrise open gradually through the day, ready to be picked the following morning. “When you first plant them, there’s nothing. Most of the field was brown, full of mud, and year after year, it was blooming, growing, getting greener,” reflects MATIERE PREMIERE co-founder and perfumer Aurélien Guichard, standing among the flowers that have become central to the house’s identity. “Now it’s almost like a paradise to me as a perfumer. There’s something very poetic about nature.”
MATIERE PREMIERE.
Guichard speaks about perfume with the intensity of someone discussing art rather than commerce. That distinction matters a lot to him. Born into a celebrated lineage as a seventh-generation perfumer whose family has cultivated these lands since the French Revolution, his connection to the terroir is deeply personal. Growing up, his creative world was heavily influenced by his mother, Béatrice Guichard, an artist and sculptor who would scatter her massive, expressive sculptures directly into these open fields – a visual juxtaposition of raw nature and contemporary art that remains an active design driver for him today.
The house of MATIERE PREMIERE was born during a summer visit in 2017 when industry experts Cédric Meiffret and Caius von Knorring met with Aurélien Guichard at his family estate. At the time, Guichard was cultivating roses exclusively for external fashion houses. However, an afternoon conversation under a majestic hazelnut tree shifted everything. The three founders realised they could build a brand around an idea that still feels radical within luxury fragrance: total control over production, from flower to final bottle. Guided by this vision, the house officially launched in 2019.
That vision sits physically behind him. Every rose used in ‘Radical Rose’ is grown exclusively on these organic fields. Nothing is outsourced, nothing is sold elsewhere. “We don’t buy any roses. Everything is produced for our oils, our fragrances, our extracts,” says Guichard. “Maybe we’re the only fragrance house in the world that can say that.”
MATIERE PREMIERE.
The scale of the operation becomes clearer while walking through the fields themselves. Ten thousand rose bushes were planted here in 2017, with another 15,000 added further uphill as the brand expanded. Irrigation systems pull water down from the mountains above, distributing it carefully drop by drop to avoid waste. Every harvested flower must reach the extraction factory within two hours to preserve the scent before transformation begins.
Even then, nature remains impossible to fully control. “This is a very bad year for the roses,” Guichard admits. Earlier frost destroyed many of the younger buds after temperatures plunged unexpectedly to -7 degrees overnight. Production this year may reach only a quarter of normal levels (which is still quite a lot, as we learned). Still, there is little sense of panic. Scarcity is simply accepted as part of the process. “Maybe we’ll say there won’t be much ‘Radical Rose’ this year,” he shrugs. “We produce what we can with the flowers we have.”
That relationship with unpredictability runs through the entire philosophy of MATIERE PREMIERE. Nature dictates the pace, not market demand. Guichard describes it as “a school of humility,” one that forced him to understand that “the time of nature is different from the time of human beings.”
It also shapes the emotional atmosphere of the brand’s fragrances themselves alongside its focused ecosystem of daily care. The intense olfactive signatures of fragrances like ‘Radical Rose’ and ‘Parisian Musc’ have been meticulously translated into hand and body washes, nourishing lotions, and protective hair perfumes, culminating in his newly introduced scented candles – a home collection explicitly formulated to smell like raw components captured mid-harvest.
MATIERE PREMIERE has built a cult following over the past few years by stripping perfume construction back to singular raw materials, pushing them to their limits through overdose formulas that feel incredibly modern compared to tradition. Each scent revolves around one central ingredient sourced directly from growers and producers Guichard works with personally. ‘Crystal Saffron’ uses saffron oil sourced below Mount Olympus in Greece; ‘French Flower’ centres on organically grown tuberose grown on the fields of MATIERE PREMIERE, while ‘Encens Suave’ builds around incense oil from Oman.
MATIERE PREMIERE.
The newest fragrance, ‘Metal Lavender,’ perhaps captures the philosophy most clearly. Lavender fragrances have long carried heavy associations with old-school masculinity and traditional fougère perfumery, something Guichard was determined to dismantle. Instead of softness or nostalgia, ‘Metal Lavender’ channels the almost industrial atmosphere of the distillation factories scattered through Provence. “People imagine something very traditional,” he says. “But the buildings are almost brutalist. Concrete. Metallic extraction tanks. Pipelines. The light was very special. The sounds. The smell coming out of the distillation tanks was inspiring.”
The fragrance combines organic lavender absolute sourced from high-altitude Provence with the house’s own organically grown lavandin cultivated closer to sea level. Guichard describes lavandin as “a lavender with a metallic facet that really makes the fragrance shine.” The result feels colder, cleaner, and more architectural than traditional lavender scents, pushing the ingredient somewhere far more genderless and contemporary.
MATIERE PREMIERE.
That tension between nature and modernity runs through everything MATIERE PREMIERE touches. Even the aesthetic of the harvest itself feels surprisingly current. The pickers, many from the local Roma community Guichard grew up around, move through the fields carrying aprons and wearing wide straw hats to shield from the sun. “There’s something noble about it,” he says. “I strongly believe in the raw beauty of things.”
That rawness has become increasingly rare within luxury fragrance, particularly at a time when many heritage perfume houses are leaning heavily into fantasy narratives disconnected from production realities. Luxury, in Guichard’s eyes, has little to do with opulence. “What is high-end perfumery today?” he asks. “It’s access to those raw materials.” That perspective has helped position MATIERE PREMIERE as one of the most influential independent fragrance brands operating right now.
Since launching, the company has rapidly expanded internationally with boutiques in Paris, London, Berlin and Saint-Tropez, with Shanghai next on the horizon. Yet despite the growth, Guichard insists the agricultural side must remain central. “As MATIERE PREMIERE grows, the fields will get bigger and bigger,” he explains. “What’s important is staying independent on production.”
MATIERE PREMIERE.
MATIERE PREMIERE.
Back in the rose fields, the scent shifts again as the morning sun intensifies. One side of the flower smells soft and floral. Flip the petals over and something darker emerges: pepper, wood, spice. “That darkness is what I love,” Guichard says of ‘Radical Rose.’ “A lot of people tell me they don’t like rose perfumes, but they love ‘Radical Rose.’”
Perhaps that is the real success of MATIERE PREMIERE. Not simply growing its own flowers or creating technically impressive perfumes, but making ingredients people thought they understood feel entirely unfamiliar again.
By the end of the harvest, fingers carry the smell of Rosa Centifolia long after leaving the fields. Earthy, spiced and slightly green, but most of all alive in a way most modern perfumes rarely are. “Creation should stay independent,” Guichard says before heading back into the fields. Around him, the next round of roses is already beginning to bloom.
MATIERE PREMIERE.
Discover more about ‘Metal Lavender’ and the full MATIERE PREMIERE fragrance collection here.
photography. courtesy of MATIERE PREMIERE
words. Gennaro Costanzo
