In 2021, Paris-based antiques dealer Antoine Billore launched his then-nascent venture on Instagram. Creating a roll call of still-life photographs didn’t appeal. “I just wanted to have fun with it,” says the 36-year-old who came up with the hashtag “stolen objects from my exes” and captured his assortment of objects, strategically placed, in a series of nude self-portraits (think Adam and his fig leaf). “I didn’t want to be pretentious,” he adds with a smile. “I was single back then.” The 100 or so items – stools, side tables, ceramics, quirky plinths, carved busts and lamps – sold out within a week.
Five years on, Billore – who is 6ft-plus, dressed in light-wash jeans and a banana-yellow vintage T-shirt – has abandoned his thirst-trap antiques-dealer stance. He still features in his social posts, but fully clothed. His feed has become a well-followed platform for his flourishing trade. At his by-appointment warehouse showroom, next to an abandoned eight-storey car park in the 11th arrondissement, every square inch is filled with his collected finds: a mix of furniture, art and objects. It’s densely layered and eclectic, like an over-furnished home meets a well-organised bazaar. The aesthetic is part European grandeur, part rustic folk art, both high craft and a bit kitsch – a combination that appeals to architects including Fabrizio Casiraghi and Studio KO, and celebs such as Anya Taylor-Joy. (Dua Lipa dropped by his showroom at Salone this year too.)
On one side of the showroom, a wooden-framed daybed sits in front of an angular, brushed-steel coffee table. The wall behind is hung, salon-style, with oil paintings and works on paper. There are 19th-century armchairs by Paris firm Maison des Bambous with ornate carvings and a pair of bronze centaurs with travertine bases.
It’s a curation that feels unique to Billore. He doesn’t look for designer names or popular design eras – an easy flip – but is drawn to craftsmanship. “Ninety per cent of the things I’m selling are unsigned,” he says. “It became kind of my thing. What I do looks a lot like my personality – I can be a little bit crazy, and a sense of humour and surprise is important to me.”
Billore grew up in a small coastal town in Picardy, northern France, and escaped as soon as he could to Lyon, then Paris. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, but left his studies early to work for scarf brand Inoui Editions. It was while decorating the boutiques of fragrance house Fragonard that he discovered his love of sourcing vintage furniture. Since going out on his own, he’s stood apart – choosing to be far from the chic antiques quarter in Saint-Germain and away from the well-trod path of design galleries in the Marais. His one-man operation still has a homegrown charm to it. “This morning, someone from LA texted: ‘I’m going to be in Paris in December. Can I book 7 December at 11am?’” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to be alive then.’”
His turnover is fast-paced: “In two weeks, the space will look completely different,” he says – and he often collaborates with other brands. His mise-en-scène at the de Gournay boutique during Paris Design Week last month featured “a pair of plinths and a paravent screen incorporating de Gournay porcelain and wallpapers”, says the brand’s director of special projects, Harald Donoghue. “Antoine has an irreverent but engaging style, with a unique eye for pieces that hover on the periphery of trend and taste.”
Studio KO co-founder Karl Fournier, who recruited Billore to source antiques for the recent revamp of Paris nightclub and hotel Bus Palladium, calls his aesthetic “iconoclastic and strange”.
Billore’s next move is a shop front, he says. In the meantime, he continues to explore his own designs. He creates ceramic pieces with an atelier on the Costa Brava – candelabras of colourfully glazed animals and botijos in the form of sausage dogs and bats (the latter are bestsellers). His debut furniture collection, presented at Salone del Mobile, features upcycled marquetry panels, and has expanded into a series that includes solid walnut dining chairs, a small bar and an enormous chessboard. Like his curation of antiques, his designs reveal the beauty and value of objects that would otherwise be overlooked. Reframing them has been key to his success. That and the fact that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. “I’m not an aesthete,” he says. “I’m not into really pure design. I love mess and a little chaos.”