Marc-Antoine Barrois is touching down in New York.
The couturier-turned-perfumer is opening a New York flagship in the city’s SoHo neighborhood, situated at 120 Wooster Street, on April 16. Barrois said the business, which surpassed $100 million in revenue last year, had reached a stage where it could sustain brick-and-mortar expansion in the U.S.
“We have two stores in Paris and one store in London,” he said. “I got offers to open stores in other places of the world, and I had this dream of London, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires. New York definitely felt it needed to be done.”
As the Saks Global saga unfolded in recent years, which carries the brand via Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, Barrois felt the most meaningful path to growth was by directly engaging his potential and existing clients. “We had asked our team to go strong in online sales, and we made the connections between people and the brand directly,” Barrois said. “Even if they can go through a department store, this is a place where we can share the DNA of the brand.”
The store itself is divided into three areas, the first of which showcases all of the perfumes. “The walls are made of hand-painted glass and it looks like a cloud,” Barrois said. “It’s a way to invite people into my imagination. All the products are behind the glass doors, there are carved wood mushrooms coming from the concrete floor.”
The mushroom is meant to demonstrate that something organic can emerge from human constructs, and the symbolism doesn’t stop there. “We have ants on the wall. New York is an urban jungle full of workers. What are better workers than ants?” he said.
The second room, which is focused on ready-to-wear jewelry, features life-sized orangutans sitting on a sofa. “Everything is a bit surrealistic,” Barrois said of the space, which was designed by Antoine Bouillot.
The third area, which is 540 square feet, is meant for hosting VIPs and master classes. “And upstairs, there are two fitting rooms,” he said. “One classical one and another that’s quite big. It’s 40 square meters [430 square feet]. Every four months, we are giving full permission to an artist to take over the place and do whatever they want.
“We tried to respect the place, which had an artist in it before,” Barrois continued. Indeed, the space was formerly the studio of painter Frederick Brown.
“I told Marc-Antoine it was time to open our own store,” said Malika Moussi, chief executive officer of Marc-Antoine Barrois Americas. “[The brand] is very unique and there is a very strong world and, without a boutique, no one can really understand it. It’s really artistic, it’s not only about selling, it’s about creation. And it’s important the customer can understand why it’s different from other brands.”
To raise awareness around the opening, Barrois tapped creative agency Fred & Farid to mastermind its marketing campaign in the neighborhood. Called “Anti-Social,” the campaign is meant to encourage analogue and in-person means of interaction. The campaign “celebrates IRL versus this excess of screen where so many luxury brands are losing themselves because of hitting algorithms,” said Fred Raillard, cofounder of Fred & Farid. “I think this is deeply damaging the idea of luxury, and luxury is trying to redefine itself at the moment.”
Tag lines, against monochromatic backdrops, include “IRL is better” and “Stop scrolling.” Those ads will run in the neighborhood around the store, in tandem with activations from the brand. “Creating human connection is something we should not forget,” Barrois said, adding that he’s focused on bricks-and-mortar in a post-AI world. “It’s what makes us different from robots.”
