Fragrance house

Arpa Studios

Founded in 2020 by perfumer Barnabé Fillion, Arpa Studios approaches fragrance as a laboratory of sensory exploration, using scent as a starting point for work connecting synesthesia, art, and other disciplines. Fillion brings to the project a background in photography, design, and botany; he trained under Christine Nagel and worked with Aesop for 12 years before and during Arpa’s development. Arpa’s debut Sequence 1 paired its fragrances with music and imagery, with contributions from Nathalie du Pasquier and glass artist Jochen Holz. One of its three initial scents, Arco Spettro, translated the Dallol landscape in Ethiopia into fragrance. The brand organizes its perfumes in modular sequences of seven, with Matter as the seventh scent intended to connect and intensify the others. In January 2025, Arpa premiered Sequence 2 at The Broken Arm in Paris, with its three initial scents organized around iris. Its work also includes Soap Culture, created in 2024 by Fillion and Sofia Elias, and a 2026–2027 Consortium Museum exhibition focused on Fillion’s iris research.