This year, Milan Design Week was filled with immersion aplenty, and installations were complete with multi-sensorial elements that allowed visitors to escape the streets for a few moments.
One in particular, located at the city’s Salone dei Tessuti, showed the others how to do it expertly – with a perfumer and designer coming together to create an experience that blended furniture and fragrance.
Marking his Milan Design Week debut, Marc-Antoine Barrois worked alongside French artist and designer Antoine Bouillot to create a show that intended to imbue a sense of optimism into its visitors. The occasion was centered around the launch of a new perfume named “Aldebarn”, which is a single flower fragrance made with tuberose – sometimes known as “the flower of the night”.
Elements of the fragrance, such as the tuberose and its name – based on the giant red star Al-Debaran – formed the inspiration for the “Mission Aldebarn” installation.
Inside, visitors entered into a mirrored cube, surrounded by a “forest of ropes”. Moving from this dark space, they arrived into a bright area lit by a huge “star”, which shone over tuberose flowers crafted from paper and scented with Aldebarn.
“I have always seen myself as an artist since I started studying fine arts at the age of 6. I have been surrounded by contemporary art and knew one day I would want to create an installation to show that art can create new emotions,” Barrios told Hypebeast, explaining the decision to represent the fragrance in a physical way.
Elsewhere, Barrois and Bouillot’s first ever furniture collaboration was unveiled. Inspired by pebbles from the beaches of Belle-Île, the limited-edition seating saw wooden chairs and stool stopped with sculptural stones.
“I love design and architecture when it means something, it is art to live with,” Barrois said. “Knowing that I was also presenting pieces of furniture, Milan Design Week seemed to me to be ideal. This is one of the best moments to celebrate design and find space to set up an installation with a very interesting audience.”
“Every element created for this event has been carefully conceived to capture and convey the profound emotions Marc-Antoine and I experienced with this perfume,” Bouillot added. Each part tells its own story, imbued with meaning.”
Mission Aldebarn took place during last this month’s Milan Design Week, which concluded on April 13.
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