For Salone 2025, Paris couturier Marc-Antoine Barrois has collaborated with the designer Antoine Bouillot to create an installation that touches all the senses
Words by Emma Moore
Marc-Antoine Barrois is a Paris couturier with boutiques in Paris or London. It is his collection of elegant, modern fragrances, however, finely crafted in collaboration with the talented perfumer Quentin Bisch, that has amplified Barrois’ name around the world. Now the creative conjurer is exploring a long-time passion for interior and furniture design with a line of limited edition seating, launched alongside his latest fragrance, Aldebaran, in an immersive exhibition in Milan.
Mission Aldebaran is designed with Barrois’s longtime collaborator and friend, the interior architect, designer and artist Antoine Bouillot. Taking place during Salone del Mobile at the historic Salone dei Tessuti, the imaginary world has developed around Bisch’s luminous tuberose scent, and the stellar inspiration of the fragrance’s name. Al-debarran is a star that is 400 times brighter that the sun that symbolises hope and optimism. Perfectly fitting the theme of this year’s Salone, Connected Worlds, the team who came together to define the multi-sensory space included not only a couturier, designer and perfumer, but also an astrophysicist – Anthony Salsi, who informed the nature of the pulsating light feature – and a composer, Thomas Roussel, who designed the auditory landscape.
Choosing to take this step in Milan during Salone was a no-brainer for Barrois, who is an alumni of the Politecnico di Milano, and is passionate about design in all its forms. “Ever since I studied in Milan in 2007 I have loved design week here. At the Politecnico, fashion, design and architecture blend together. I started with couture, then jewellery, then launched a perfume collection. I am now launching ready-to-wear and interior design was on my dream list.”
Meanwhile, there is nothing new about the disciplines of fashion, architecture and product design colliding in a creative soup during Salone, but Barrois and Bouillot’s sensory mix up comes at a time when the power of smell is gaining increasing recognition in architectural circles, as a tool to tell stories. In this instance, however, it is not so an environment directing the olfactory design as a scent triggering the design of the space. “For Mission Aldebaran, we were careful to narrate the story we had in our minds when we experience the perfume,” says Bouillot. “What it tells us, how it makes us feel, and how it connects us to others. The scent features a strong presence of tuberose, a flower that blooms most intensely at night, and Aldebaran is one of the brightest stars in our galaxy. These two key elements naturally guided the creation of the experience.”
The result was a play of darkness and light: a dense forest of ropes that the visitor navigates through to reach a light-filled clearing, with a field of white paper tuberose at its heart. “We realised that this clearing was truly a meditative space during dark times, offering a place to recharge,” explains Bouillot. “So we needed to incorporate seating.”
The seating is a design collaboration between Barrois and Bouillot and will be launched as a limited edition through the Marc-Antoine Barrois boutiques in London and Paris, and StudioTwentySeven in New York. Resembling marble boulders resting on a wooden platform, they are in fact blown-up versions of pebbles that the duo collected on the beaches of Belle Île where Barrois lives in France. Their surfaces have been scanned in high definition to capture the curves, texture and details, and then meticulously reproduced, carved from blocks of Italian marble. “Nature worked with us,” says Bouillot. “And we cherished every second of it.”
Mission Aldebaran, April 8th to 13th, at Salone dei Tessuti, via San Gregorio, 29.
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