Les Bains Guerbois: A Unique House Capturing 140 Years of Parisian Memories in Scent

“Les Bains Guerbois is an adventure that never ceases to captivate me. Spanning three centuries, this story has found new life as never before. Since 2018, we have invited great perfumers to turn the defining years of the house into fragrances: a powerful, eclectic, and utterly unique Parisian story.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois, Founder and Creative Director of Les Bains Guerbois​

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Essential Information

• Brand name: Les Bains Guerbois
• Founded: 2016 as a perfume brand; the building’s history dates back to 1885
• Founder: Jean-Pierre Marois
• Location: 7 rue du Bourg l’Abbé, Paris, 3rd arrondissement
• Official website: https://lesbainsguerbois.com
• Japanese rendering: “Reban Gerubowa” (“les bains” means baths, and “Guerbois” is the founding family’s surname).​

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The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

It All Began with a Café: Café Guerbois, the Cradle of Impressionism

To trace the story of Les Bains Guerbois, we need to go back even further than 1885.

At 9 boulevard de Clichy in Paris stood a café run by François Auguste Guerbois (1824–1891). Known as Café Guerbois, it became, from the late 1860s, the meeting place of the Batignolles group. Every Sunday and Thursday, artists and writers including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Émile Zola, and Alfred Sisley gathered around Édouard Manet. In art history, this café is regarded as the birthplace of Impressionism. Marois himself has said in an interview:​

“Open an art-history book, and you will see that Impressionism was born in this café.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

One surviving anecdote tells how Manet, furious at a review by the critic Duranty, challenged him to a duel in February 1870. Fortunately, Duranty’s injury was minor, and the two remained friends afterward. It was the Guerbois family that ran this café, alive with art and passion.

1885: The Birth of the Most Luxurious Spa in Paris

While running this artists’ gathering place, Auguste Guerbois was nurturing a more ambitious idea: to buy land in central Paris and build “the most beautiful and luxurious spa in the city.” Together with his son, Albert Guerbois (1857–1926), he commissioned architect Eugène Ewald to design it. In 1885, Les Bains Guerbois opened at 7 rue du Bourg l’Abbé in Paris’s 3rd arrondissement.​

In 1890, the newspaper Le Temps described it as follows.

“Having seen Les Grands Bains Guerbois, one cannot help marveling at its luxury and comfort when comparing it with the old establishments of Paris.”
— Le Temps, September 16, 1890​

With Turkish baths, Russian baths, sulfur-steam showers, massage rooms, a hammam, a tearoom, a restaurant, and even a hair salon, the establishment was groundbreaking for its time. The artists and society figures who had frequented Café Guerbois came in great numbers; Marcel Proust, in particular, is known to have been a regular visitor to its sulfur baths.

Les Bains Guerbois thus became a Parisian landmark embodying the union of hygiene and culture, body and mind.

1978: The Birth of the Legendary Les Bains Douches Nightclub

The story now leaps forward. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the building, which had declined after its days as a spa, experienced a dramatic turning point.

Maurice Marois purchased the building from the Guerbois family in the late 1960s. Then, in 1978, antiques dealer Jacques Renault and his partner Fabrice Coat revived it as a nightclub. The interiors of the club, named Les Bains Douches, were designed by a young, then-unknown designer: Philippe Starck.

“Philippe Starck was an unknown designer, fresh out of school. What is fascinating about this place is not only that it attracted the most famous people, but that it also played a part in the careers of unknown people who later became world-famous.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

After an opening night on December 21, 1978, attended by more than 2,000 people, Les Bains Douches quickly became a symbol of Parisian nightlife. Often called “the Studio 54 of Paris,” it drew celebrities from around the world, including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, and Naomi Campbell.

Its musical history is equally remarkable. Joy Division performed there on December 18, 1979, a concert later officially released as the album Les Bains Douches 18 December 1979. David Guetta, who would go on to become the world’s most famous DJ, also began his career there as a resident DJ.

Then, in 1992, came a legendary episode involving Prince. After performing for tens of thousands of people at Paris’s largest stadium, he arrived at Les Bains Douches late that night and gave a free, improvised seventy-five-minute concert for just 300 people.​

The 2000s: Decline, Then a Phoenix-Like Rebirth

As the 2000s began, Les Bains Douches started to lose its former luster. With the rise of new clubs and the deterioration of the building itself, it finally closed in 2010.

This is where the central figure of our story appears: Maurice Marois’s son, Jean-Pierre Marois.

Marois was born on July 2, 1963, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. After earning a master’s degree in film and comparative literature at the Sorbonne, he built a career as an independent film producer and director. His work includes collaborations with renowned filmmakers: Mary (2005) with Abel Ferrara, South of the Border (2009) with Oliver Stone, and projects with Alejandro González Iñárritu.

In 2006, Marois inherited the legendary property from his father. The building was reportedly on the verge of collapse at the time. Yet his attachment to the place, where he had spent countless nights in his youth without his parents’ knowledge, led him to decide to turn it into a hotel.​

In 2013, before renovation began, Marois organized a temporary artist residency in the building called Résidence d’Artistes. Legendary street artists including Jacques Villeglé, VHILS, C215, and Space Invader covered the walls with their work, reawakening the legend of Les Bains in a new form.​

In March 2015, with the help of architect Vincent Bastie and interior designers Tristan Auer and Denis Montel, among others, it opened as Les Bains Paris: a five-star boutique hotel with thirty-nine rooms and suites, a restaurant, bar, spa, and nightclub. Lonely Planet described it as “perhaps the most wonderful lifestyle hotel in Paris.”

2016: The Birth of the Les Bains Guerbois Perfume Brand

After completing the five-star hotel, Marois was convinced of one thing.

“The best way to tell this incredible story is to capture it in a bottle.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

The starting point was his desire to create a scent unique to the hotel. Captivated by Trudon’s Spiritus Sancti candle, Marois contacted its perfumer, Dorothée Piot. Their collaboration produced Atmosphère, a scented candle for the hotel. A signature eau de cologne by Michel Almairac (in Japanese) was launched at the same time.

“The creative process with Dorothée was so fascinating that it made me want to go further.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

And so the Les Bains Guerbois perfume brand was born in 2016. In 2018, it introduced its full eau de parfum collection, Une Date, Une Histoire, meaning “a year, a story.” In the collection’s very first year, the house achieved the remarkable distinction of winning the French Fragrance Foundation’s FiFi Award for Best Fragrance from an Independent Brand. The winning fragrance was 2015 Le Phénix, created by Michel Almairac.

Marois recalls his surprise at the award.

“Coming from the film industry, I found even the name ‘FiFi’ amusing, and at first I did not take the nomination seriously. When I arrived at the ceremony, it was in a large theater, and I met the CEO of Guerlain and the CEOs of other major houses. I thought, ‘My goodness, this is serious business.’ And then we actually won. I do not think there had ever been a precedent for this happening with a new brand’s very first collection.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

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What the Brand Stands For

“Scripting” Fragrance with a Filmmaker’s Methods

The most distinctive feature of Les Bains Guerbois’s approach to fragrance is Marois’s application of the “pitch,” a technique he developed in the film industry, to perfume creation.

“Because I come from the film industry, I write a ‘pitch’ that briefly sets out the story I want a fragrance to capture. Take 1979, for example: concerts were flourishing at Les Bains Douches, and it was the year the new-wave movement arrived from Britain. Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, Joy Division… I put that kind of music and those emotions into the pitch, and Dominique Ropion (in Japanese) chose something very ‘cold’ from it.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

Each perfume is conceived as a pairing of a historical year and a story associated with it. Marois writes the story, and the perfumer translates it into olfactory language: a process much like making a film together.

“Carte Blanche” for Leading Perfumers

The secret to Marois’s success in attracting celebrated perfumers was the freedom that only an independent house could offer.

“As an independent film producer, I always had to persuade talented people to join a project, not with money, but with quality and the pleasure of working freely. Perfume is the same. Giving perfumers a kind of ‘carte blanche,’ without the constraints of a marketing committee, is what drew them to Les Bains Guerbois. In fact, almost all the superstar perfumers we have worked with agreed to collaborate a second time.”
— Jean-Pierre Marois​

Bottle Design: A “Modern Relic”

The Les Bains Guerbois bottle is highly regarded by many perfume lovers. Donatien Darnaud, the brand’s marketing and communications director, explains its design philosophy as follows.​

“We wanted to create a timeless ‘modern relic,’ like a crystal decanter you might find in a Parisian apartment or an old speakeasy. The facets catch the light beautifully, like reflections on water. That connects with Les Bains’ history as a bathhouse. The weight, the balance in the hand, the depth of the glass… everything expresses a quiet, meaningful luxury.”
— Donatien Darnaud​

The angular, substantial bottle is topped with the sculptural black cap that serves as a brand signature. Its magnetic closure also makes it practical. A label in the color symbolizing each perfume catches the eye, creating the sense that the story begins the moment the bottle is picked up.

Sustainability and Vegan Formulas

All the eaux de parfum are blended and manufactured in France. Their formulas are 100% vegan and cruelty-free, containing no dyes, synthetic stabilizers, preservatives, or UV filters. Every perfume’s color comes entirely from its natural ingredients. The outer packaging is recyclable, and the cellophane is a certified-organic, compostable material derived from corn. The 30 ml size introduced in 2024 uses some recycled glass and plastic in its bottle and cap.

The Brand Emblem: Bacchus and Two Sirens

The emblem of Les Bains Guerbois derives from a sculpture that has watched over the building’s entrance since it opened in 1885. The intertwined motif of Bacchus, god of wine and celebration, and two torch-bearing sirens symbolizes “strength, energy, wisdom, delicacy, sensuality, fluidity, intoxication, and freedom.”​

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The Fragrance Lineup

Collection 1: Une Date, Une Histoire (“A Year, a Story”)

The main collection, which fully launched in 2018, comprises nine fragrances named for key years in Les Bains Guerbois’s roughly 140-year history, each expressing the atmosphere of its era through scent.

Fragrance	Historical theme	Perfumer	Fragrance profile
1885 Bains Sulfureux	The birth of the spa	Dorothée Piot	Amber aromatic
1900 L’Heure de Proust	The era of the literary master Proust	Jérôme Epinette	―
1978 Les Bains Douches	The birth of the nightclub	Bertrand Duchaufour	Gourmand
1979 New Wave	New-wave music	Dominique Ropion	Fresh spicy
1986 Éclectique	The eclectic 1980s	Bertrand Duchaufour	Woody resinous
1992 Purple Night	Prince’s improvised concert	Dominique Ropion	Tuberose amber
2013 Résidence d’Artistes	The street-art exhibition	Dorothée Piot	Fruity woody
2015 Le Phénix	The rebirth as a hotel	Michel Almairac	Woody spicy
2018 Roxo Tonic	Les Bains today	Fanny Bal	Citrus spicy

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Particularly popular are 1979 New Wave and 1992 Purple Night. New Wave is an ambitious creation in which Dominique Ropion takes on peppermint, a material perfumers often shy away from, moving dramatically from a cold, metallic opening to a spicy, woody drydown. Purple Night, another Ropion masterpiece, uses tuberose to express Prince’s contradictory personality: a delicate appearance paired with overwhelming stage presence, and an androgynous aesthetic combined with exuberant sex appeal.​

Collection 2: Formes & Matières (“Forms and Materials”)

Launched in 2022, the second collection focuses not on historical years but on the building’s materials and forms. Its distinctive synesthetic approach draws inspiration from the materials used in the hotel’s architecture and interiors.

• Oud Laqué: By perfumer Mathieu Nardin. A tribute to the precious lacquered wood used in the guest rooms.​
• Damier: By perfumer Fanny Bal. Its motif is the two-tone tiled floor handed down from spa to nightclub to hotel. The contrast between black pepper and jasmine evokes the black and white tiles.​
• Raku: By perfumer Jérôme Epinette. Inspired by the Japanese raku pottery that designer Tristan Auer used in the guest rooms and club bar. Lemon, fig, and cedarwood are enveloped in soft musk.

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Incidentally…

• Marois’s earliest scent memory is, he says, “the scent of my mother’s skin mingled with Guerlain’s Shalimar.”​
• Marois’s motto is “Less is more”.​​
• Joy Division’s live album Les Bains Douches 18 December 1979 was recorded in this very building. The fact that a historic post-punk album was born in the place that would later give rise to a perfume brand should be intriguing for music lovers, too.​​

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