The perfumers talk about working with tomato leaf and channeling creativity in an exclusive interview.

Inspired by the serene and sensory pleasures of a lush garden, Maison Margiela Replica's latest fragrance, From The Garden, is all about the simple joy of a sunny day spent picking tomatoes. Created by perfumers Olivier and S&eacute;bastien Cresp, the scent perfectly blends tomato leaves, green mandarin, and patchouli.
Developing this fragrance was like nurturing a garden itself&mdash;full of careful experimentation. S&eacute;bastien shared that their goal was to capture the juicy and green essence of tomatoes, aiming for something fresh and easy to wear. While Olivier added that mixing tomato leaves with the fizzy green mandarin created a unique and sparkling top note that&rsquo;s both unusual and captivating.
As you wear it, the fragrance reveals floral and herbaceous geranium notes, adding an unexpected touch. The middle phase continues the garden vibe with geranium's slightly rosy and minty qualities blending smoothly with the green notes. The base note of patchouli adds a rich, earthy aroma, giving the scent a grounding, almost tactile feel of hands in the soil.
To give us more insight into the process of creating the scent, the Cresps speaks to L&rsquo;Officiel Hommes Philippines about the inspiration behind From the Garden, as well as details about the art of perfumery.

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind From the Garden?
S&eacute;bastien Cresp: We had a strong idea to walk around the beautiful tomato note. So very, very juicy but, at the same time, with the green leaf.
Olivier Cresp: You also have some freshness. S&eacute;bastien got the idea of blending the tomato leaves with some beautiful Green Mandarin. So, you have a kind of a fizzy fragrance like a sparkling fragrance on top. It's quite unusual to work with tomato leaves and tomato juice. And, as soon as we were wearing the fragrance, the trials you see the finishes. Lots of people came to us, so it's always a good sign.
S&eacute;bastien Cresp: The idea was to make something very, very natural. Not too thick at all. And very, very elegant. Very, very, very easy. Easy to wear.
Olivier Cresp: But good ingredients. The brand is really linked with quality. Quality for us is using good ingredients, really the best ingredients, the best innovation, the best extraction, and frankly speaking, working on the tomato leaves combined with tomato juice. It's quite new.
Are there any specific garden types or locations that served as inspiration?
Olivier: We have lots of memories. We had a house in Grasse with a nice garden, and we were growing some tomatoes in summer. With tomato, when you take the leaves you scratch it with your fingers, it smells like black currant.

What unique olfactory elements or ingredients did you incorporate to capture the essence of a garden?
Olivier: When S&eacute;bastien got the idea of the tomato leaf, we tried to constitute the tomato leaf's effect. Then, we make it wearable on the skin with diffusion, objection, and long-lastingness. There is a creative part, finding the good idea, and then there is a technical part, to get some projection.
What role does creativity play in the art of perfumery? How do you channel this creativity?
Olivier: For us, it's not interesting to have a thousand ideas per year. It's better to have one or two good ideas and work from there. I can tell you, seriously, I spend time every day focusing for one year, not making a few experiments, but making a thousand of experiments just to get something close to perfection. It's very, very important to work to focus to get fewer ideas per year. It's more than enough to succeed.

Olivier and Sébastien Cresp on Maison Margiela Replica's From the Garden

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