Matiere Premiere

Matière Première is a French niche perfume house based in Grasse, founded by the perfumer Aurélien Guichard with two friends from the fragrance industry, Caius von Knorring and Cédric Meiffret [9]. Its name translates to "raw material," and the house is built around a single idea: each fragrance is composed from an overdose of one central natural ingredient, often grown on Guichard's own organic fields. The company remains highly active, opening new flagship stores through 2025 and 2026 and releasing the fragrance Metal Lavender in May 2026.

Sources differ on exactly when the house began. The Glass Magazine and others date the founding to 2019, the year Guichard established the company and launched it with six perfumes [9]. The brand's own site describes the project as beginning in 2016, when the first fields were planted [2], and the trade publication Glossy records the house as "Founded 2017, Market Launch 2019" [8]. The 2016 date refers to the cultivation that preceded the company, while 2019 marks the commercial launch.

Aurélien Guichard was born in Grasse, long regarded as the centre of French perfumery, and represents the seventh generation of a perfumer family; his father, Jean Guichard, is also a perfumer. Before starting his own house he spent more than twenty years as a perfumer for fashion brands, with credits that include Gucci Guilty and Tom Ford's Sole di Positano [9].

The house grew out of land. In 2016 Guichard bought ground in Grasse and planted roses, and according to the company the idea for Matière Première took shape while watching 10,000 rose trees grow. He and his two co-founders set out, in their words, to build "a contemporary French parfumerie house that would place the beauty of a single natural raw material and uncompromised olfactive quality at the centre of everything." The company commonly describes Guichard as the only perfumer in the world who cultivates his own ingredients.

Matière Première makes its perfumes from what the company calls an overdose of a central natural material, "cultivated or chosen for its unique strength." The brand describes its formulations as clear, linear and contemporary, designed so the raw ingredient itself dominates rather than a layered composition. According to The Glass Magazine, each fragrance contains between 85 and 92 percent natural ingredients [9].

The house frames its mission as "stylish perfumery: direct, radical, and uncompromising," where each scent is conceived as an olfactory manifesto. Guichard ties this to the farming behind it, saying that "having simple, direct access to sustainable, high-quality raw materials is, for me, the true luxury of tomorrow." Stated brand values include purity, immediate readability, addictive comfort and transparency.

The range covers extrait de parfum and eau de parfum alongside body products, a hair mist and scented candles. Ingredients are sourced from named origins — among them rose centifolia, tuberose and lavandin from Grasse, vanilla from Madagascar, saffron from Greece, frankincense from Oman and citron from Sicily.

The house's bestselling fragrance is Vanilla Powder, launched in 2023, which Who What Wear described as having "gone on to become a viral success thanks to its heavenly gourmand scent" [12]. An earlier release, Radical Rose, is built around an overdose of rose absolute from organically grown rose centifolia. Other fragrances include Parisian Musc and French Flower, the latter made with tuberose grown on the brand's own land. The most recent launch, Metal Lavender (2026), is an aromatic fougère using a lavandin oil from the house's fields with what Now Smell This called "vibrant, almost metallic facets" [11].

Guichard established an organic estate in Grasse in 2016, spanning more than six hectares and holding Ecocert organic certification. The fields were planted in stages: more than 15,000 rose centifolia bushes in 2016, over 50,000 tuberose bulbs in 2021, and more than 10,000 lavandin bushes in early 2023. The company says the plants are grown without pesticides, with manual weeding to preserve the aromatic purity of the harvest. It frames the practice as a way "of reconnecting with the essence of the perfumer's profession," with the perfumer overseeing raw-material quality directly from soil to bottle.

Matière Première began with outside backing, raising €1.3 million (about $1.5 million) in 2020. In 2024 the luxury group Kering Beauté acquired a minority stake in the house, and Glossy reports that L'Oréal later became the parent company after acquiring the Kering Beauty division in October for $4.6 billion [8]. The company is led by chief executive Caius von Knorring, who previously held positions at LVMH and Puig.

Radical Rose won the United Kingdom Fragrance Foundation's Perfume Extraordinaire award in 2021 [10]. The house has been covered by niche fragrance publications including Cafleurebon, Now Smell This and Fragrantica, as well as the trade and fashion press; a 2025 Glossy profile reported revenue of €30 million for 2024 and growth of 70 percent [8]. No English-language Wikipedia article exists for the brand or its founder, and the house is better known within fragrance circles than in mainstream beauty coverage.

The brand is active and expanding. According to The Glass Magazine, its fragrances are sold in more than 50 countries across 400 retail points, including retailers such as Harrods and Galeries Lafayette [9]. It opened flagship stores in Saint-Tropez and on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris in 2025, followed by Berlin and London, and released Metal Lavender in May 2026 [5].