This is part two of the feature on Marc-Antoine Barrois. Read part one here.
By 2014, Marc-Antoine’s couture had become a staple not only in Paris, but around the world. His clothes were being worn on red carpets across the world, and he had a list of high-end clients who wanted his clothes. Unfortunately, tragedy struck Paris the following year in the form of a terrorist attack. The Paris bombing in November 2015 shocked the entire world — it also affected his business.
“Most of my finer clients couldn’t come to France because they were not insured. When you are a celebrity and you go to a country, they insure you and your travel, in case you get sick and want to come back quickly or some other emergency,” explained Barrois. “After the bombings in Paris, insurance companies were not insuring travel to Paris, so I was losing most of my clients at the time. So, I wanted to offer them a gift so they wouldn’t forget about me.”
And that’s where the idea of starting a perfume was birthed. He met a man named Quentin Bisch through a friend who introduced them to each other. That friend thought that Bisch and Barrois were very similar because they were born in the same year. That thought was correct because they both hit it off instantly. Barrois says meeting Quentin — who was a perfumer — was like finding a twin brother.
“When we met in 2015, there was an instant connection,” Barrois recalled. “We had the same vision of creation. We had so much in common, and the more we got to know each other, the more we would have in common.”
It didn’t take long for Bisch and Barrois to get to work on their first perfume. They wanted this scent to be an effective and memorable gift. Out of the creation process came Barrois’ first scent, B683; to this day, it is still his favorite scent. His clients liked B683 as well.
“One of my celebrity clients, Robbie Williams‘ wife, Ayda Fields, loved B683 so much that she wanted 12 bottles,” the designer said. “She talked about it to so many people that we had to launch it.”
B683 was a hit — but Barrois didn’t believe it yet. He doubted his perfume would be a big success in the marketplace because his scents were so tailor-made for his clients and different from the other perfumes and colognes in France at the time. He told a story where he took his perfume to one of the biggest perfume marketplaces in France at the time. He spoke with the owner; in the conversation, Barrois said he didn’t believe his perfume belonged on the shelves next to the likes of Moschino’s perfume and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s cologne.
“I told her about my doubts, and she told me, ‘The cool thing in the next year will be to be authentic. So, you fit here because we are here to show what will be cool in the next few years.’ She was indeed a visionary,” Barrois said with a smile.
Now in 2024, Barrois has added five more scents alongside his iconic B683 perfume. “Encelade,” “B683 EXTRAIT,” Ganymede,” “Ganymede EXTRAIT” and my personal favorite, “TILIA.” The entire collection launched in the United States last month and can now be found at Neiman Marcus. Like his couture, his perfume has become a hit worldwide.
“Perfume is an emotion; it’s magic; it’s supposed to be a beautiful memory,” Barrois said. “I want people to smell my perfume passing by someone or in the elevator and be like, Wow, I thought about you. My dream is for my clients to have one fragrance that they love. This scent, this fragrance, this is my signature.”
