【Vogue Singapore】Guerlain’s Thierry Wasser on scents, sustainability, and L’Art & La Matière

There are perfumes, and then there’s Guerlain‘s exclusive L’Art & La Matière collection. In fact, when it comes to the artistry, beauty and complexity of perfumes, few names can match the savoir-faire and history of the French beauty brand.

“In this nursery, every time you take out trees, you re-prepare the soil and you replant. So you’re in a totally virtuous cycle and it is what people call sustainable. So I allow myself to use sandalwood in the new creation because I have a source.”

“Before I secured that Australian route, I wouldn’t dare use sandalwood. But since we started working with that producer, we also had a competitive edge because we were the first ones to be able to source in Australia. We made the quality he makes together. So that’s a true partnership.”

“Actually, you don’t do wood fragrances without having and sourcing oud. Oud is very tricky because you have wood everywhere in South and South East Asia. It could come from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, you name it, and there are a lot of cousins. Botanically speaking, the main family of oud is melaleuca trees that you have.

“True. Fragrance design and fragrance is very abstract. It’s invisible, which is something we have limited vocabulary about. You don’t have a specific vocabulary to express fragrances. So you have to take from other vocabulary of expression to describe a fragrance because the abstraction in fragrance design is total.”