Perfumery is a family business for you. What made you want to follow the same path as your ancestors?

My desire was born from several experiences, several feelings. I think of the passion for nature, passed on by my grandparents, who grew roses, jasmine and verbena in my native region near Grasse. I grew up between Paris and their harvests, which left me with fabulous memories.
There is also the artistic vocation of my parents - my father, a perfumer, and my mother, a sculptor. Through my father's work, I saw the joys as well as the limits and even the pains of this profession. But above all I was fascinated and attracted by the total and necessary commitment of all those people I met as a child and teenager, who were perfumers, painters, sculptors, to make this creative profession one of the most beautiful professions in the world.

What is your oldest olfactory memory?

I have this memory, as a child in the early 80s... We are in Grasse, in August, it is almost midday. The jasmine harvest is in full swing. I see my grandfather in front of the scales, gathering the pickers to weigh their harvest of the day. The scene is in an old shed, in the shade. The smell of the flowers in the baskets mixes with that of the beaten earth, the paraffin of the agricultural machines, the burlap... It has remained engraved in my memory.

Where did you get the idea of founding a brand where each of the creations sublimates the facets of a particular ingredient?

In 2014, I had the desire to continue my grandparents' commitment to this regional know-how of growing perfume plants, and to extend their relationships with a whole group of people who contributed to the quality and prosperity of their harvests - pruners, pickers... While continuing my creative work as a Perfumer, I took on the status of farmer and founded an Ecocert-certified estate in the Grasse region, on which I planted Centifolia Rose. My two partners, one of whom had been my client and the other my colleague for many years and who had become friends, also have family ties in the South of France and witnessed the birth of the estate. We realised that we shared this desire to put the raw beauty of nature at the heart of an olfactory creation of the highest quality. It seemed to us that, through too many associations with many other ingredients, no perfume, however beautiful, was truly dedicated to revealing the texture of a central natural ingredient, used in overdose. MATIERE PREMIERE was born.

How can you succeed in innovating when you focus on a single ingredient? 

I often heard around me that perfumes "all smell a bit the same". Without sharing this observation, I told myself that there must be some truth in this adage.
I wanted to create perfumes that would appeal to people who no longer use perfume as much as to those who love beautiful perfumes. There is a universal form of beauty in the appreciation of a raw material. I include it in a simple formulation, understandable by all, to make people feel the pleasure of understanding what they are wearing.

I wanted to create perfumes that leave a real trail, without being invasive or disturbing. Fragrances that would make people ask you what you're wearing several times a day.

Among perfumers, we often say that the less money we have to formulate, the longer the formulas are. With this in mind, I went in the opposite direction: a simple formulation, around a central ingredient of extreme quality, without counting.

I wanted the texture of the ingredient to be palpable. That the fragrance worn be understandable; just amplify and blur certain facets of each main raw material. So each fragrance is a new creation, guided by the search for the unique.

Since the creation of the brand, what has been your biggest challenge?

When you combine creation and entrepreneurship, challenges are constant. We launched at the end of 2019, just four months before the COVID crisis started, which pushed us to find solutions to continue presenting our fragrances, both to our end customers and to our potential retail partners around the world, while everything was closed.
But it's the challenges of creating each new fragrance that are fascinating: finding the most exceptional core ingredient, dosing it in such high proportions that its flaws can stand out as much, sometimes more strongly, than its most beautiful aspects, and shaping it, until it expresses the beauty of its texture as I see it. And to make each new creation match the existing collection in every way: a direct, contemporary olfactory style with unparalleled projection and sillage, while remaining extremely comfortable to wear.

How are the Centifolia Roses, which you grow in your own fields, extracted?

We use a highly respected and qualified local company with real expertise in the extraction and distillation processes to look after our flowers. They are picked by hand every day in May. They are then delivered immediately (within the hour) to the factory to be extracted and transformed into absolute. This way, all the freshness is preserved.

Could you tell us more about slow perfumery?

I would like to talk to you about high quality perfumery... What is called "slow perfumery" corresponds for us to a return to the essentials of quality in the elaboration of a perfume, a return to certain practices that have been neglected for some time, in order to reduce the industrial or creative complexity.
The ageing processes (maturation and maceration), organic farming, the use of ingredients with a high olfactory quality but also ethical are, in my opinion, part of the complexity linked to excellence, to a form of quest for the unique.
We have integrated all these practices, even going so far as to produce our own Centifolia and Tuberose roses: it's unique!

What material do you sublimate in French Flower, your novelty?

It is one of the most expensive floral absolutes in the world: Tuberose absolute from Grasse. Tuberose is originally a plant from the agave family, which has been established in Grasse for several hundred years. Today it is widely cultivated, particularly in India. The way we grow it in Grasse is special, as we take the bulbs out of the ground in November to protect them from any risk of frost. We then replant them in May. The long stems grow, gorged with nutrients from the soil, sun and lots of water, and flower from the end of August. The flowers are bright white, the stems crisp green, and the scent they release each day at dusk is so enchanting that unmarried young men were long forbidden to walk near tuberose fields.
There are already beautiful perfumes that pay homage to the fatal side of the tuberose. They are all actually bouquets of white flowers, with jasmine and ylang-ylang in between. At the heart of French Flower is tuberose, to the exclusion of all other flowers - except for a trace of orange blossom. To do this, I worked on an accord between the Absolu de Tubéreuse de Grasse, which reveals all the floral power, with a enfleurage of Tubéreuse de Grasse, which emphasises its sensual side, its sun-warmed skin. And I wanted to recreate the smell of our tuberose field, on summer evenings in Grasse.

What are your future projects?

MATIERE PREMIERE is a constant and exciting source of projects. I put my know-how as a perfumer at the service of the most exceptional natural ingredients, the source of inspiration is so rich. We plan to launch a new opus in the autumn of 2022.
And we will soon start growing lavender on our estate, which will join the Centifolia Rose and Tuberose.