This one is tuberose gold.
It’s the thick of night. Deep within a dark forest, there’s a clearing, covered in white flowers and bathed in light from a star overhead. It transforms this glade into an otherworld.
This ethereal scene is expressed in Aldebaran EDP, the latest olfactive artwork from the multidisciplinary Marc-Antoine Barrois and perfumer Quentin Bisch.
Barrois describes a gobsmacking after being presented with Bisch’s heroic tuberose note: “It really blew my mind, I was speechless,” he says. “So I had to get back to Quentin with the emotions that I felt [when smelling it].” Barrois closed his eyes with the next encounter, and the above scene played out on his eyelids—the clearing, the celestial forest scene, the flowerbed. And that the light felt protective, too, for whoever bathed in it.
Marc-Antoine Barrois Aldebaran EDP
Buy: Marc-Antoine Barrois
Aldebaran is the second scent in what Barrois calls his “floral constellation”.
“Three years ago I asked Quentin to work on floral scents [for the brand], and we had the idea that all of these [eventual] florals would be stars in a constellation—all of them suns,” he explains. “And they would all bring light in a different way.”
First came 2024’s sweet-and-solar Tilia, a bottling of endless summer, the promise of happiness. It is named after an imaginary star. In fact, Barrois names all of his scents after celestial bodies, from satellites to moons to literary planets. And with Aldebaran, he shoots for the brightest star in the Taurus constellation.
The scent was formally introduced at 2025’s Salone del Mobile in Milan (Milan Design Week), in a collaborative and immersive installation between Barrois and Antoine Bouillot.
How Does It Perform? Here’s My Take.
If there’s one way to endear me to a fragrance (especially from first whiff), it’s to tell a story and set a scene, set a feeling. So, I went into Aldebaran with this exact setting in mind: the aforementioned forest, the florals in the clearing, the light bathing down.
Barrois even likened it to Harry Potter—that scene in the third book/film where Harry has to cast a spell—a “Patronus”, in his case, a ray of light from his wand that takes the shape of a stag—deep within the Forbidden Forest to save a parallel version of himself from being consumed by soul-sucking death eaters (I am fully recalling this from memory, ha!) It’s a moving scene, too, this light pouring in to protect Harry, to dispel evil and renew hope.
Needless to say, I now have this vivid scene to attach to this scent. And it really does fit the script.
That tuberose creates a creamy constant as the scent dries down, and for me its maté notes give it the vibrance needed for unisex wear. The paprika pronounces more as it wears, too, and those tonka notes are (for this nose) super subtle. Like any great floral, this one projects optimism, albeit with quietude compared to its predecessor, Tilia.
I’m not shy about my adoration for this label. I’d probably rank Aldebaran second in the roster for my order, after their debut launch, the spicy and warming B683 EDP.
Marc-Antoine Barrois B683 EDP
