Marie Bouillon surrounded by Maron Bouillie. Photo GLKraut.
I keep confusing Marie Bouillon and Maron Bouillie. One is the designer with an infectious smile and the other is the brand with lilting humor. When I phone up Marie and call her Maron—or is in the other way around?—she answers as though the two were interchangeable.
So I’ve checked my notes once again. Yes indeed, Marie Bouillon is the one who has playfully teased her name into the tradename Maron Bouillie. It’s the Maron Bouillie products—fabric tote bags, shoulder bags, storage boxes, purses, clutch bags, cushion covers and book covers—that are digitally printed with photographic images that speak of daily life in France.
Learning sewing from her mother as a child sparked Marie’s interest in fashion design. Fashion interested her as a field “teeming with ideas and creativity,” but while at fashion school in Paris she was put off by the push to conform to a business model requiring significant investment for the development of collections with a limited life cycle. After completing her studies in 1999, she began working independently and has done so ever since. She created her company Maron Bouillie in 2003.
Not that Marie wouldn’t be thrilled for her products to be considered as “fashionable,” she says, but she sets out to create to create timeless, useful products that contain touches of humor and poetry. Furthermore, she recognizes that by selling shopping bags, for example, at 30€ or shoulder bags at 125€, her artisanal, small-series pricing is higher than what trendy young women are typically looking to spend for a fashion accessory.
Her collections are inspired by various, often shopping-related aspects of life in France, from food markets to bread to old boutiques to flea markets. Images are printed on both sides of the recycled plastic fabric as well as on the strap and bottom of bags and storage boxes so that the narrative runs throughout the product. The objects depicted often define the size of the object created. For example, her market collection plays with the dimensions of each vegetable so that a bag imprinted with an image of, say, zucchinis or leeks is the size of those zucchinis or leeks, or the bread collection that includes a baguette-size tote with four sides, each presenting an image of a different type of stick of bread.
In addition to the market and bread collections, others focus on images of retro boutiques or vegetables (for storing veggies in the kitchen) or letters of the alphabet. Items also remain available from older collections imprinted with images of Provence and of second-hand goods. There are notes of French or Parisian clichés to some of these but especially notes of authenticity and cheerfulness, making them delightful gifts for Paris-lovers and other Francophiles, including yourself.
The full range of products can be seen on Marie Bouillon’s website, maronbouillie.com, through which the vast majority of Maron Bouillie products are sold. Some items are carried by shops in Japan since several years after creating her company she began working with a partner in Japan for distribution and production there. In France, she remains a one-woman show. Products sold online may be made in Japan or France. Those indicated as being made in France are fully made in France. All are made primarily of recycled plastic, though some with lining of organic cotton.
Having said all this, your best introduction to Marie Bouillon’s work is through her own explanation in this France Revisited video.
© 2019, 2020, Gary Lee Kraut