After graduating from the École du Louvre in 1944, Perrier was variously employed by couturière Marie-Louise Bruyère, film producer Fred Orain, the Embassy of Pakistan in France and Panair do Brasil (Pan American Airways).

Leveraging her father's contacts within the fashion industry, Marie-Jacques Perrier became employed in 1955 as an English-language journalist for the Paris office of Fairchild Publications, partnering her with the budding illustrator Kenneth Paul Block.

Perrier earned wide acclaim for her interviews with many of the decade's most fashionable women, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Estée Lauder, Princess Margaret and Farah Diba Pahlavi.

[5] Through the course of her seven years with Fairchild Publications, Perrier interviewed most of the major Paris-based fashion designers, including Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, Nina Ricci and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Later writing for a variety of publications in Paris, London, Milan, Sydney and Buenos Aires, she continued to report on haute couture shows, interviewing a new generation of then up-and-coming designers including Calvin Klein, Thierry Mugler, Oscar de la Renta and Kenzo Takada.

[7] Perrier's career as a fashion journalist was remarkable in that it spanned essentially three distinct eras of haute couture, from that of Schiaparelli to Saint Laurent to Mugler.

Following her father's death, Perrier decided to modernize the R-26 artistic salon by offering long-term residence at her family's apartment to foreign students studying in Paris.