Pick Of The Week: Atelier Materi’s Tonka Kumaru

Some childhood memories are best left unsaid, unless they smell this good. Tonka Kumaru takes the nostalgic, almond aroma of French school glue, Cléopâtre and grows it up. French fragrance house Atelier Materi crafts it into a warm, quietly addictive study of tonka bean. Created by perfumer Céline Bourdoncle Perdriel, the composition opens with bitter almond, bergamot and cardamom before moving into roasted barley, hay absolute and cedar leaf, finally settling into roasted Tonka, Madagascan vanilla, amber and musk. Véronique Le Bihan launched Atelier Materi in 2019, naming the brand after the Breton word for "matter." The core idea is simple: pick one standout raw material and build an entire fragrance around it. Combined with French craftsmanship, thoughtfully sourced ingredients and a clean, structural design style, every detail is carefully considered, all the way down to those hand-finished, sculptural bottle caps. Tonka Kumaru is a little olfactory déjà-vu, with a very different kind of aftertaste.

Tonka Kumaru 100ml priced at €240

Credits
Words by Nicole Atieno
Photography by Julian Melzer

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