Ramdane Touhami, multi-disciplinary artist and renowned design genius, unveiled his first ever collaboration at Milan Design Week. It came shortly after the opening of his latest project, the Drei Berge Hotel in the Swiss Alps. The collaboration with Fischbacher 1819 aims to combine Drei Berge Hotel’s concept of re-imagined Swiss luxury with the heritage of the 205-year-old Swiss textile company. The result is ‘The Drei Berge Collection’: three unique fabrics in a contemporary colour palette of seven bright block colours, with only two shades of cream and beige as the ‘neutral’ options.
The fabrics are named after mountains in Oberland, the same mountains that inspired Ramdane to buy and renovate the Drei Berge Hotel. “I discovered these crazy three mountains, Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger, and I said: this is the most beautiful place on the planet,” he tells me, beaming. It was there, in the idyllic village of Mürren, that he found his dream hotel. Of course, his dream hotel needed the perfect curtains. And thus the Drei Berge collection was born: Jungfrau, a knitted curtain made entirely of wool; Eiger, a light, delicate woven fabric also made of wool; and Mönch, a soft, thick throw with a curly surface texture, made from an alpaca-wool blend.
For the launch of the collection, the Fischbacher 1819 showroom in Brera has been transformed into a small replica of the Drei Berge hotel; the walls are painted the same deep forest green, and temporary wood panels are installed to make the space feel like a mountain lodge, despite being in the middle of the bustling city of Milan. Tall drapes of Jungfrau in orange are hung next to Eiger in green.
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“I like to combine these two colours,” Ramdane says, motioning to the green and orange drapes. “Actually, these are the colours I used in the hotel. We have a lot of these colours in my hotel, in my house.” Every microdecision comes directly from Ramdane – from the colour of the paint to the placement of the alpine yellow wildflower bouquets brought directly from Switzerland by CEO Micki Fischbacher from his own garden.
Ramdane is a visionary. He is also a perfectionist. This becomes increasingly apparent in the days before the launch, as he passionately describes the concept of the project to Fischbacher’s sales team: “Me, I hate to change [the curtains]. I don’t like it. The idea is to have this winter-y thing, you push it to the side, and you have the summer one. Actually, you have to select two. I mean, the [customer] has to buy twice more. This is the concept. I don’t know if it’s gonna work, no one’s done it like that, but the idea is to have the winter and the summer on top of each other.”
But this is not a sales gimmick. On the contrary, Ramdane is trying to simplify the execution of seasonal curtains into one perfect year-round set. “And it’s beautiful. In the winter, you want cover, but you still want to have the light because there’s not so much light. That’s why you have the holes [in Jungfrau]. In the summer, you really want dark. It’s the idea of playing with the light.”
“I don’t do collaborations,” he says, when I ask how this project differs from his previous ones. “I did this because I was dreaming to make something to give you this feeling of mountains, of cold. You see your curtains, you touch them, you just want to be wrapped in them, you know? I mean, it’s a blanket that you hang up. When you have a curtain that looks like a jumper, you warm up the room. And I love this idea.”
But why Fischbacher 1819? The Swiss heritage brand with Iranian-born Camilla Douraghy Fischbacher at the creative helm appeared to be the perfect match for Ramdane to execute his dream of the perfect alpine curtains; to emulate “the feeling of a warm room, even before you turn on the heat.” He had a vision in mind, and Fischbacher gave him free reign to create something unprecedented, something to transform a space.
“You can destroy your whole house with a curtain that looks cheap,” Ramdane explains. “I’ve seen it a hundred times; amazing house, fantastic furniture, and the wrong curtain.”
Fischbacher 1819
fischbacher1819.com
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