After Paris and London, Marc-Antoine Barrois unveils a vast new flagship in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, bringing together the many facets of his creative world: fragrance, ready-to-wear, couture, as well as accessories and jewelry.
Located at 120 Wooster Street, the new store was conceived hand in hand with architect Antoine Bouillot;
From the outside, visitors are immediately struck by a suspended sheet of black metal, floating from the original bracket by means of two metal clothespins crafted to imitate wood.
Inside, the 300-square-meter space and its six-meter-high ceilings made it possible to think on a grand scale, without ever abandoning the faithful sources of inspiration that run like a golden thread through the various spaces imagined by the designer. Among them is a dreamlike vision of nature, expressed both through figures that are more or less figurative and through rich textural effects.
The first section of the flagship is devoted to the world of fragrance. The scents are displayed on sculpted wood stands rising from the waxed concrete floor ; at their center, a backlit alabaster pedestal magnifies the bottles.
The entrance into the ready-to-wear universe is made through a narrowed passage, defined by angled partitions designed to break with spatial linearity and preserve a sense of surprise.
The store features a living-room lit by a skylight and sash windows. Conceived as a welcoming and comfortable space, ready to receive guests, it is furnished with pebble-like marble and wood seats, designed in spring 2025 for Milan Design Week, and with a gigantic six-meter (19 feet) sofa that extends a further three meters beneath the stair opening, as if levitating, and is reflected in a mirror.
Contemporary art is ever-present into the store. Like a treasure hunt, each work acts as a clue, helping to illuminate the hybrid universe of Marc-Antoine Barrois. A giant ant by Jean-François Fourtou coexists with The Nuclear Power Masquerade, a limestone figure by German sculptor Stefan Rinck. Photographs by Algis Griskevicius, The Fruit and Life of Mutants, alongside The Memory Waterfall by Daniel Arsham, further blur the lines, projecting the future into the past.
Throughout April, a communication campaign entrusted to advertising agency Fred & Farid preceded the store’s opening.
Designed as an anti-social media activation, the campaign subverted the conventions of digital platforms to encourage users to disconnect and rediscover IRL (In Real Life) experiences as the ultimate form of luxury. Moving away from the traditional codes of a retail launch, Fred & Farid developed a series of minimalist messages disseminated through social media content and targeted guerrilla marketing activations across New York City. From April 1 to 30, the campaign occupied more than 30 strategic locations throughout the SoHo neighborhood, with at least four posters displayed at each site as part of a large-scale guerrilla marketing rollout.
