THE JOURNAL
A deep dive into the knitwear-stuffed closets of modern nomads Mr Ramdane Touhami and Ms Victoire de Taillac.
In the 20 years they have been together, Mr Ramdane Touhami and Ms Victoire de Taillac have lived on four continents and moved house nine times. Jaipur, Brooklyn, Tangier and Tokyo have all been their home at one time or another. They describe themselves as modern nomads with good reason. These days, they have settled for the deep comfort of a top-floor duplex in an hôtel particulier in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. The place oozes style. And so it should, for that is their business as well as their pleasure.
After variously working in PR, starting a T-shirt brand called Teuchiland, opening a concept store in Paris with American fashion designer Mr Jeremy Scott in the 1990s and dabbling in reality TV, the pair set about reviving the 17th-century wax-maker Cire Trudon, turning it into a luxury candle brand. It proved a runaway success.
The couple’s latest project is Buly 1803, a high-end beauty and grooming brand, which they founded in 2014 but which nods to history. Nods quite vigorously, in fact. The idea came to Mr Touhami while he was reading Mr Honoré de Balzac’s 1837 novel César Birotteau, about a perfumer who loses all his money in property speculation. The perfumer in question was a real person, Mr Jean-Vincent Bully, who sold a skin tonic called Vinaigre de Bully. Inspired, Mr Touhami tweaked the name and launched the brand. Its old-fashioned aesthetic and refined products presaged a new direction in luxury: historic luxury. At any rate, it sold like hot cakes.
Despite them being among the most pre-eminent names in the rarefied world of French luxury, their apartment is a pleasing jumble of beautiful bits and bobs. No more so than when it comes to their wardrobe, which is ceiling high and filled with handmade shirts, vintage coats and, appropriately for Valentine’s Day, the many gifts that have passed between them over the years.
Brush up on Buly 1803
Film by Mr Jacopo Maria Cinti