A little while ago I had the honor of attending a Q&A at Skinlife in Lisbon, with Aurelien Guichard and Cédric Meiffret, two of the three founders of the perfume brand Matiere Premiere.

If you’re not already familiar with the brand, they are quite popular lately and currently have 11 fragrances, one being a Harrods exclusive. My own favorites from the line are Encens Suave, Falcon Leather and Parisian Musc. And to my own surprise, I am not totally opposed to their immensely popular rose scent, Radical Rose. A couple of these will be touched upon in the interview below, so please keep reading to find out more about this special fragrance house.

“If someone stops you in the street and asks what perfume you’re wearing, then I’ve done a good job.”

Matiere Premiere was founded in 2019. Previously, Aurelien had worked many years for Narciso Rodriguez, who as most people know, is obsessed with musks. So when Aurelien would later create Matiere’s own musk, he wanted to make something different. He went looking for woody notes, ended up using cedar wood oil, and then topped it off with a green leaf note to amplify the vegetal parts of the fragrance. He made a green, woody and sweet musk. The outcome is the classy and elegant Parisian Musc as we know it today.

One of the many things I enjoy with Matiere is the names of the fragrances. They’re not extremely extravagant, but they’re still playful and catchy.

How do you come up with the fragrance names?
It’s all about intuition to be honest. It also has to fit the fragrance of course. For example Crystal Saffron is a very clear saffron, not golden at all. We also wanted it to sound cool! In the end I often spend a lot of time on the name. I want them to sound open minded and international, not just French.

The line feels almost complete already, so how many fragrances will the final collection have?
Yes, we actually feel the same. There’s a sense of totality here, but I think there is still more to explore! I don’t like when you smell several scents from a brand and they all smell more or less the same. So I want the fragrances from Matiere to be unique and different from each other. We also don’t want too many fragrances, perhaps we’ll release one per year, and then we’ll see how long we’ll manage to stay alive. We have no reason to discontinue any fragrances at the moment, they’re all selling quite well.

How long does it take you to create a fragrance, and when do you know that a fragrance is ready for release?
Radical Rose and French Flower took between 1000 and 2000 tries before I finally reached a result I was happy with. That’s about 1-2 years in total, because I can often do 5-10 tries in one day. Crystal Saffron on the other hand took only 10 tries, or 2 days.

We don’t listen to too many opinions, we launch what we want and when we want. Usually we ask some people to wear the fragrance and see how the reactions are, in the street and at home.

Are you considering releasing other product lines in the future?
We don’t want to put lots of products on the shelves, we want to launch bestsellers. And only when we are ready. If we have nothing we’re happy with, we won’t launch anything. In 2022 we launched 2 fragrances because the tuberose was finally ready. And like I said before, Crystal Saffron was faster to create than the others.

“Radical Rose took almost two years to complete.”

However, we are launching a body product range this year. We’ll be extending into body lotion and so on. When you have different types of products from the same scent line, it makes the brand look richer. This also goes hand in hand with having our own boutiques.

What do you think about fragrance taste in different cultures and parts of the world?
It seems taste is changing all over the world right now. What we used to think people like in for example Japan is not true anymore, and what French people like to wear has changed a lot too. Having said that, I try to create fragrances that don’t feel too French, or too fashion.

What ingredients do you prefer to work with?
I love rose petals. Radical Rose has the highest rose concentration in the world, something I set out to do from the start, because I wanted to see what it would be like. That’s why it’s so deep and rich. We own our own production and fields, of rose, tuberose and lavender. Thanks to this, we can control the whole process from seed to finished product. This is something that’s quite unheard of within the fragrance industry.

Unfortunately, not all our ingredients are organic. Either because it is not available or because they don’t smell that great. But we are always trying to encourage producers of other ingredients to be more organic and eco-friendly.

How about Oud Seven, will it ever be available outside of Harrods?
We get almost 2000 messages per day about Oud Seven. It’s an exclusive for Harrods, simply because it’s Harrods. At first we had Falcon Leather as a Harrods exclusive, and our brand was very, very small. This was fantastic for such a small brand, to have an exclusive release for Harrods! But then we wanted to do a wider release of the leather fragrance, because we like it so much and it was so popular. When we decided to do that, Harrods asked us to make a new exclusive.

We are not planning on selling it outside of Harrods, and we don’t want to start making more exclusives for other stores or locations because then we might get stuck doing that instead of what we truly want to do.

Do you work for other brands still?
I work on scents for big mainstream designers, but not for any other niche brands.

“Perhaps we’ll release one fragrance per year and see how long we manage to stay alive.”

What fragrances do you like to wear yourself?
On a normal day I will wear whatever I’m working on, to see how it feels.

What’s the next fragrance to be released from Matiere Premiere?
I’m currently working on a vanilla, and the challenge is to create a vanilla that isn’t sweet. I did finish it once, a long time ago, but in the end I wasn’t happy with the result and now I’m reworking it from scratch. The plan is to release it in the fall this year (2023).

So, what do you guys think about the brand? Which fragrance is your favorite? I for one can’t wait to try this mysterious vanilla, so let’s hope it gets finished on time! Thanks to Skinlife for this wonderful opportunity to meet Aurelien and all the best of luck to Matiere Premiere with their future releases and endeavors.