Aurélien Guichard, founder of Matière Première and Master Perfumer at Takasago, discusses raw materials, the Middle East’s influence on fragrance and the challenge of scaling a niche brand without compromising quality.
Aurélien Guichard has built Matière Première around a belief that the raw material should be the starting point of a fragrance, rather than something hidden behind the brand story.
Speaking at Beautyworld Dubai 2026, the Master Perfumer at Takasago and founder of Matière Première discussed the origins of the niche fragrance house, its approach to ingredients and the challenges of scaling while maintaining quality at Beautyworld Dubai.
Guichard comes from a family of flower growers and perfume creators in Grasse and established his own perfume plant farm in 2016, growing centifolia rose, tuberose and lavandin.
He has created fragrances for major international brands including Gucci, Versace, Narciso Rodriguez, Burberry, Giorgio Armani and Zadig & Voltaire, with creations including Gucci Guilty, Versace Eros, Narciso, Burberry Hero and Gucci Intense Oud. Guichard founded Matière Première in 2019, with each fragrance built around a central natural raw material. The brand is now present in 60 countries.
He said: “Sometimes marketing is worse than reality because brands try to make things more beautiful than what they are, but if you look at the backstage, it’s as beautiful.”
For Guichard, that means giving greater attention to what happens before an ingredient reaches the perfume bottle, including the people producing it.
He noted: “Our challenge is to keep on growing our production on one hand, and on the other hand, to make sure that the people who produce our vanilla, our tuberose are prosperous. Today there is not enough money given to the farmers and to the producers of raw materials. The people who work in the field have a huge know-how, but they don’t make much money.”
He argued that the fragrance industry needs to think differently about how value is distributed through the supply chain.
The focus on raw materials is also central to Matière Première’s creative approach. Rather than developing fragrances around consumer testing, Guichard said the brand prioritises its own creative direction.
He said: “We don’t give any market test, any market research. We don’t believe in any of that.”
The approach is reflected in the construction of the fragrances themselves, with Matière Première using high concentrations of its central ingredients rather than treating them as supporting notes. Guichard said the objective is to make the character of the raw material immediately apparent.
That philosophy has also shaped the brand’s expansion into the Middle East, where fragrance is often treated as something that can be layered, combined and personalised rather than used as a single finished scent.
The region is becoming an important source of influence for global fragrance, with Beautyworld Dubai highlighting the growing international impact of Middle Eastern preferences for fragrance concentration, oud, amber and layering.
The Middle East has also provided a different perspective on how fragrances can be used together for Guichard.
His recent launch, Cherry Amber, was developed with that market in mind. The fragrance combines natural cherry extract with rose, amber and Exaltolide musk, using a familiar amber structure but with a more contemporary interpretation.
He admitted: “Amber was challenging because on one hand it had something very rich, opulence about amber, but quite often a bit French, old-fashioned, traditional. I was trying to find how can we create a modern amber that’s universal, not too French, not too dressed up.”
The challenge for Matière Première now is to expand internationally without compromising the principles on which the brand was built.
Guichard said: “The challenge is how can you scale up, but at the same time stay very qualitative.”
That tension between growth and control is relevant as niche fragrance moves further into international markets. Beautyworld Dubai’s 2026 programme reflects the growing focus on how independent fragrance brands can develop internationally while retaining a distinctive identity.
Guichard said that maintaining that identity ultimately comes back to having a clear reason for building the business in the first place.
He added that brands should not wait until every element of the business is perfect before launching. Guichard advised: “You shouldn’t wait to be ready to launch because you’re never ready.”
His advice for the next generation of beauty and fragrance entrepreneurs is to build around a clear mission rather than simply trying to create a commercially successful product.
“You don’t build things to make money. You build things because somehow you have a mission,” he said.
Matière Première’s mission continues to centre on raw materials, craftsmanship and the people behind them, as the brand attempts to grow without losing the qualities that made it distinctive in the first place.
