STYLE PHIALS - EXTENDED INTERVIEW EDIT: Matière Première Metal Lavender

Aurélien Guichard on the creation and intentions behind his latest perfume launch

In early spring 2023, it took a full week for the Matière Première co-founders Aurélien, Cédric Meiffret and Caius von Knorring, along with ten colleagues, to plant 10,000 lavandin bushes in Aurélien’s family flower farm in the South of France. His father, Jean Guichard (the legendary perfumer behind Cacharel LouLou and Obsession by Calvin Klein) got stuck in too, helping to water every bush by hand during a particularly dry spell. “We had nightmares that everything was going to die because it wasn’t raining!” says Aurélien.

“Right at the beginning of this lavender project, the main reason why I planted the bushes was not so much for the smell, but because I thought it would look beautiful.”

This is a very Matière Première thing. Their DNA, their ethos, always centres on the simplicity and beauty of nature, despite the house’s phenomenal global success and expansion. Ever since I met the team back in May 2022, when I was invited to Aurélien’s farm near Grasse to pick roses in his organic fields, they’ve operated in a way that feels completely different to every other luxury fine fragrance house. Each creation centres on one raw natural ingredient, which is elevated to celestial levels by spinning it into something surprising, unique, edgy, and so addictive you’ll want to roll your whole body around in it like catnip. The ironic twist (and, I think, Matière Première’s secret sauce), is that the final fragrance smells so true and loyal to that raw natural ingredient that you wonder whether they’ve actually done anything to it other than stir its oil with alcohol. The mystique and magic of Matière Première is in the elegant minimalism of each scent, delivered with an extraordinary level of quality, ethics and expertise.

Take, for instance, French Flower; an ode to the tuberose fields in Aurélien’s family estate, with a spike of ginger to replicate the carnal heat of tuberose’s raunchy symbolism, plus a slice of succulent pear to evoke the bright white glow of the petals and juicy snap of the long green stalks. The final scent is the purest and most realistic tuberose perfume I’ve ever smelt, wrapped in luxury and regal refinement. As you wear it, it never lets you forget who the star of the show is: that majestic flower, lovingly tended to by dozens of people throughout the year to keep it fed, safe, protected, pruned, picked and distilled, like the devoted servants to a holy deity. The blending wizardry and extra accords simply make it more regal, more its finest self, more tuberose. Like the scent equivalent of Queen Elizabeth II’s carefully matched accessories, or Dolly Parton’s wigs, or the tambourine in a Fleetwood Mac song: they’re the details that make them more them.

Months ago, when the team revealed their next focus would be lavender, I knew it would be an entirely different lavender to anything else I’d ever smelt, but also wrapped in the things that make lavender more lavender. What would be that signature twist?

“Right at the start, I knew a lot of people didn’t think of lavender as a sophisticated smell,” says Aurélien. “So I thought ok, how do I make it ‘Matière Première’? How do I pay tribute to this beautiful ingredient? I wanted to show a version of lavender that people have never met before, and to make people surprised and curious. Maybe even addicted to it!”

“I sourced different type of lavenders and extractions to achieve a full picture: a lavender absolute for the soft, floral side, but also the lavandin variety, which is what we grow in our fields. Usually perfumers don’t really speak about lavandin because it’s seemed to be a cheaper version of lavender, but I think it’s amazing as an ingredient. When I smelt the extract it had an incredible metallic side to it. I asked myself: what if I want this part of it to shine? What if I assume the fact that it’s a metallic lavender? Do I have the conviction to tell this side of the story?”

“My next challenge was to make it feel premium, comfortable and modern; to maintain that radical luminosity along with the floral and soft facets, as if wearing a veil that wraps you but feels like pure light.”

When you spray Metal Lavender, the initial hit is jarring and intensely metallic, like pressing your cheek, and perhaps a corner of your mouth, on the steel vat that distills the freshly-picked lavender stalks and tasting the shiny, clinical and icy-cool tank. As it unfurls on your skin and through your nose, it’s like peeking your head over the side of the vat to watch sack upon sack of freshly-picked flowers tumble into the silvery well, and inhaling huge waves of dry, herbal and green clouds, interspersed by whips of heady purple blossom-tops that smell like peach and sage, the cold side of the pillow and French linen cupboards.

Image courtesy of Matiere Premiere and a perfect literal representation of Metal Lavender.

What struck me when wearing Metal Lavender is that you never lose that dry, fresh, tinny and slightly clinical glisten: you walk around smelling like you picked every sprig yourself, plucked the blossoms from the stalks with your bare hands, and spent the day working at the artisanal lavender distillation unit in a spotlessly clean white lab coat. It is not an ethereal and romantic “Provençal-dreams” lavender; it’s a scented tribute to the devotion, precision and hard work involved in traditional lavender growing, harvesting and extracting.

“The heartbeat, for me, is always the raw material,” says Aurélien. “I always want to be disciplined about that because having a consistent way of approaching creation is also a way of ensuring a consistency in style for Matière Première.”

“It’s the very reason we built the brand. Because we live in a more and more abstract and digital world, there was a real need for me to prove that you can create a fragrance house that underlined the beauty of the work of people who are in the fields, and that there’s still nothing quite as beautiful than to create fragrance with an overdose of one raw material. It’s a miracle given by nature, by decades of knowhow, and the passion of people who work so hard. Even if we invent all kinds of technologies and molecules, the most beautiful thing to me is the luck and opportunity to have an ingredient in your hands to play with and make it shine.”

Shine indeed: I feel like my arm is reflecting the matte silvery curve of the distillation vat and I am simply a human portal for this power-packed lavender queen. Yet, on another occasion when I wore it on a particularly hot day recently, it brought such a welcomed coolness to my senses as if I were standing in the middle of a lavender field in Grasse at dawn with a salty, chilly and damp Mediterranean breeze brushing over me.

It’s surprising. It’s bracing and fresh, yet comforting and warm. As a summer scent, I think this is a stunning option; a loose white linen suit in a wardrobe of fussy bright frocks. Of course, you might absolutely loathe it (which I love hearing about, because isn’t the glorious point of perfume, and of any artform really, to stimulate a reaction?) but I do think there is something for everyone within the Matière Première family. If you get a chance to smell it, and to try some of their excellent discovery vials and custom-built sets, do let me know which one you’re most drawn to.

Of course if you’re salivating at all this shiny lavender chat and need it in your life right now, here is the shopping link straight to Metal Lavender. It comes in a large 100ml, a medium 50ml and small 6ml sample (big enough for several tries).

I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-blotter moment; if you did let me know as I’ll post most perfumer interviews about special scents in the future. Thank you, as always, for subscribing, and see you soon.

SAVE THE DATE: I’ll be in conversation with Matière Première to celebrate their upcoming Harrods Exclusive perfume on the evening of Wednesday 8th July, at Harrods’ auditorium (we’ll have a smell of Metal Lavender together too!). I’ll post the ticket link as soon as it’s live.