RAMDANE TOUHAMI
From subversive entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami, Drei Berge is a hotel nestled in the Swiss Alps, with all the poetic touches you would expect from the man behind Officine Universelle bull 1803.
“I'm a bit of a liar: fake it until you make it, like you say in English,” explains one of France’s most successful and celebrated entrepreneurs, Ramdane Touhami. “Sometimes, you have huge failures. Sometimes you have big wins.” The Moroccan-French subversive entrepreneur stands out for his myriad projects, because he refuses to follow a known playbook: “Avoiding trends is always a good direction; that’s how I can surmise my way of doing things.”
Instead, he digs deep into history, oftentimes via literature, and hooks upon a new project to resurrect in his own way: “It's a curiosity with the past but remaking it for the future,” he says. The internationally renowned beauty brand, Officine Universelle Buly 1803—recently acquired by LVMH—and the candle company, Cire Trudon, originally founded in 1643 are two of his most well-known and successful such endeavors.
His latest, Hotel Drei Berge, an iteration of which will be presented via a Swiss chalet-style cafe at Manifesto this year, is no different. The result of an obsession with Elisee Reclus’s 1881 book The History of a Mountain, and the quest to discover a particular valley described in the story, led him to purchasing and renovating the Swiss Alpine hotel he found there from 1907, which opened just last year. This month, we met Touhami at the brand-new Parisian outpost, a cafe called Drei Berge Utopia, and caught up just ahead of the festival.
PAIGE SILVERIA
How did growing up in the countryside shape you?
RAMDANE TOUHAMI
I'm still a countryside boy. I'm very connected to the seasons. It's early June, and I'm very disappointed because I haven’t enjoyed nature enough this year. Soon the days will start getting shorter again. This is what I'm always looking at—how the plants grow, the trees, I'm obsessed with this kind of thing.
PS
Tell me more about your youth; you were kicked out of multiple schools?
RT
I hate people giving me orders, and it was pretty complex for the teachers because they give orders non-stop. I like to learn, but not that way. I was a little bit of a bad boy, but I had very good grades, which is very strange. I had an attitude issue. I'm a big mouth. I insulted the teachers.
PS
Looks like you turned out alright.
RT
Yeah. Maybe. What’s most important is health. I just did a checkup last week and they said at my age, they have never seen a guy with a stress level so low.
PS
Wow, even with your schedule? Why do you think that is?
RT
Because I don't give a shit.I won’t be surrounded by people I don't like. Some people accept bad things. I don't accept any attitude. If someone is not good, they can fuck off. I don't care. I do only things I want to do. All the situations I put myself in, I chose them.
PS
You’ve always been this way?
RT
Always. Not for a single second in my life have I worked for someone else. Never in a coffee shop, office, nothing. At 16, my brother went for a job for the summer and I didn’t want to do something like that. Instead I created a company that picked up medicine from the pharmacist for the old people. It did very well. I sold the company at the end of the summer, and made 10 times what my brother did.
PS
The second entrepreneurial endeavor was the famous graphic shirt?
RT
Teuchiland, the land of the Hashish. That is very funny. After I was kicked out of all these schools the only one that would accept me was a boarding school. So I arrived at this new school and one guy there was making T-shirts and he was the most popular guy and all the girls were in love with him. So I did my own T-shirt. It went crazy. All the people in all the high schools in the area wanted to buy it. And of course I became super popular with the girls. I made so much money that some bad boys that I used to hang with kidnapped me, trying to steal it.
PS
Kidnapped?
RT
It's a long story. I have hundreds of stories like that. I did too many things. But the T-shirt made me hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. So these bad boys kidnapped and beat me for a few days. And finally I told them where the cash was. They stole everything. When I went back to my parents' house, they were super upset about me leaving school so they kicked me out of the house. But it’s fine. I always rebound. I decided to go to Paris, with nowhere to crash and was homeless, living in the metro, line 12 for a year. So many stories.
PS
How are you with fighting?
RT
Pretty good. 20 years of boxing. I'm very mean. But anyway, one day I met a girl who invited me to crash at her house. After a week I redid the T-shirt and I was back on track. Viola. As simple as that. But I had a lot of fun and that's it. It was amazing. That is something I can say: I’m never bored.
PS
And never stressed.
RT
But it's not stress, it's pressure. Right now, the new generation, they are not good at working. This is the only thing I'm not happy with. For 2000 years, they worked for God. For the last 100 years, they used to work for a boss. In the last three years, they have worked for themselves.
PS
What do you think people should be working for?
RT
For a big project, a plan, something funny. Creating reality, it's magic. Right now, everyone is obsessed with their credit. "Oh, I did that, that and that." Who cares what you did? I mean, you have to work for something bigger.
PS
Tell me about your work with fragrance.
RT
Scent's always been important. In the countryside we grow with different scents. And honestly speaking, I just found out by accident that I'm good with them. Someone asked me to help them with the oldest candle factory in the world, called Cire Trudon. I didn't want to listen or watch what the other people were doing. I wanted to put all my own creative ideas into it. I was good at it and they were extremely popular. I created a new direction in smell and everyone copied me. I'm a bit of a liar: fake it until you make it, like you say in English. Sometimes, you have huge failures. Sometimes you have big wins. The perfume was a big win.
PS
Can you expand on your process?
RT
Avoiding what other people look at. Everyone always goes to the same art opening and then guess what? Six months later, you see that same inspiration in many fields, because everyone is looking at the same thing.
PS
Whom do you admire?
RT
I don't admire anyone, anywhere. I don't give a shit. Maybe the people in Gaza, I admire them, people in Congo, Sudan, people who fight for freedom. I’m an extreme lefty.
PS
What’s the story of Buly?
RT
It’s a funny story … I have a very well-known French politician friend, Arnaud Montebourg. He used to call me Cesar Birotteau, a character from a Balzac book. So I read it and it's a story of a guy coming from the countryside to Paris, who creates the most successful beauty brand. Because I'm curious, I look into how Balzac came up with his stories. And apparently, he used to go and listen to the cases in court and write books based on them. Cesar Birotteau was based on Jean Vincent Bully. I thought, Wow. I love this story. So I found out about the brand and its history. It had been a big deal in the 19th century. I got the name and made this shit happen. Fuck. Now there are stores all over the world. One day Bernard Arnault calls, asking me to sell the company. I did, and then I bought this house that was previously owned by the most famous French script writer. After buying it, I discovered this bookshelf of Balzac books. The realtor tells me that the previous owner was a huge fan of Balzac and wrote the only adaptation of this Balzac book, but it was never shot.
PS
Full circle. Did you approach the installation for the café at Manifesto in any different way?
RT
No, no planning. I never think about a project before I start. I just see the space, and decide: let's do this, let's do that. All my life is a huge improvisation.
