Fragrance house

MDCI

MDCI, short for Marchal Dessins et Créations Indépendantes, was founded in 2003 by Claude Marchal, who remains its owner and creative director. In 1994, Marchal envisioned a small fragrance house centered on quality, beauty, and creative freedom after becoming disillusioned with cost-driven, bureaucratic fragrance companies. MDCI presents fine fragrance as an art, drawing on classical antiquity, the Renaissance, seventeenth-century France, and historic art collections. Its creative model is collaborative: Marchal works with independent or creatively free perfumers, selecting compositions individually rather than enforcing a single house style. The brand’s visual identity took shape even before its first fragrance, when Marchal designed sculpted figurine and bust stoppers inspired by classical art, making the flacon a central part of MDCI’s identity. The house has released fragrances created with perfumers including Pierre Bourdon, Francis Kurkdjian, Stéphanie Bakouche, Bertrand Duchaufour, Cécile Zarokian, and Patricia de Nicolaï. Invasion Barbare and Chypre Palatin are frequently discussed by collectors as modern classics.