Aurélien Guichard: Growing Flowers and Revealing the Beauty of a Single Ingredient

Career in Perfumery

Q. Were you ever interested in another profession? If so, what was it?

No. What matters, though, in any profession is a strong, heartfelt desire to do the work, rather than seeing it simply as labor. I was very fortunate to become a perfumer, because it allowed me to fulfill my wish to work with others, meet different people, and broaden my possibilities. A perfumer’s work is full of adventure and discovery, with many encounters and journeys.

Aurélien Guichard, from a Shiseido interview

Born and raised in Grasse, like his perfumer father Jean Guichard, Aurélien was surrounded by farms growing fragrant plants such as roses and jasmine, a business his family had pursued for generations. This helped spark an interest in the perfume industry from an early age. Aurélien is said to be an eighth-generation perfumer, and his mother is a sculptor.

After earning a degree in economics, politics, and sociology at the University of the West of England, he is said to have felt a desire to create perfumes during an internship at Givaudan in New York. Having decided to become a perfumer at around 20, he began training at the Givaudan Perfumery School in 1997, at the age of 21. After graduating in 2003 at 24, he was given opportunities, despite having no composition experience, by Guerlain, which at the time was commissioning various perfumes from perfumers outside the Guerlain family, and by Nina Ricci. Sylvaine Delacourte was directing Guerlain’s fragrance work at the time, and he composed Aqua Allegoria Anisia Bella (2004). For Nina Ricci, he composed Love in Paris (2004), and worked in New York.

He moved from Givaudan to Firmenich in July 2014, then joined Takasago in May 2018 while also running his own business.

In 2016, he established a rose farm of his own. His grandparents’ farm had grown old, and he feared that generations of accumulated expertise would disappear unless he created a new one. He also dreamed of being a perfumer who grew his own ingredients and used them in his own perfumes. The largest farm in southern France is planted with 12000 roses and 22000 tuberoses. As his desire to establish his own brand grew, he launched Matière Première in 2019.

Matiere Premiere

Essential InformationFounded: 2019Founder: Aurélien GuichardOfficial website: EnglishFollow Matiere PremiereThe Founding...

lechercheurdeparfum.com

2026.11.07

Matière Première, which has also arrived in Japan, was created by Aurélien Guichard together with his parents, Cédric Meiffret, and Caius von Knorring, with the aim of “showing more people the beauty of a single ingredient by overdosing one key perfumery material.”

Asked which perfumes he would like to create, he names Dior Homme and Terre d’Hermès for men, and L’Eau d’Issey and Chanel No. 5 for women.

He is also said to have captained a hockey team as a student.

Perfume Creations

I love Impressionist paintings and street art in which minimalism and functionalism meet an overdose of materials and colors. I am also a great fan of Japanese architects such as Tadao Ando, and particularly love Tadao’s use of few materials and his concept of space.

Aurélien Guichard