Ambered Petal

The shea nut of West Africa and the cacao bean of Mesoamerica.

Two humble butters, one hard and one soft, from distant geographies with shared histories. Ghanaian shea butter and Ghanaian cocoa butter sit at the centre.

A heavenly Mexican vanilla and mimosa flower come in over them. Underneath, macambo, the white cacao found in Peru, Colombia and Ecuador, with an elemi resin from the Philippines. The creamiest floral amber, on warmed skin.

Matteo Parfums is the work of Matthew J. Sánchez, a Southern California native, son of a Mexican-Sicilian father and a Ghanaian-American mother. Sánchez studied applied mathematics and chemistry at UCLA, then spent three and a half years in fragrance and chemistry research before founding the house in Los Angeles in 2017. Every release fuses cultures and concepts: a Korean wine with a Caribbean rum, Chinoiserie, a contemporary imagining of the Aztec, a horchata turned into an amber accord and made in-house.

The work is whimsical and imaginative, and the fragrances are hand bottled and formulated in California. The debut and its two flankers are formulated on the founder's own family heritage, with Latin, Mediterranean and African materials. The rest of the line reaches further, to Korea and the Caribbean, to China and Europe, to ancient Maya and Aztec, distant geographies with shared histories, each release its own fusion.