The stationery shop and engraver Papier Royal sits midway down the eastern gallery of the storied Palais-Royal, the cloistered luxury arcade in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The store is new, but with its time-worn mosaic floors, ceiling hand-painted with a cloudy trompe-l’œil sky, custom oak shelving and signage, including a centuries-old coat of arms, it looks as though it’s always been there.
The Papier Royal boutique, in the historical arcades of Galerie du Palais Royal, Paris © Julien Liénard
The boutique bears the signature approach of its founder, 51-year-old French-Moroccan creative director and serial entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami. The mastermind behind fragrance and beauty brand Officine Universelle Buly 1803 – which he revived with his wife, Victoire de Taillac-Touhami, in 2014 – has made a career out of building heritage-rooted institutions for contemporary customers. His creative agency Art Recherche Industrie worked with the fragrance brand Cire Trudon and the historic silverware house Christofle, but now he’s focused solely on his own projects. They include the Marais concept store Words Sounds Colors & Shapes and the brand Radical Media Archive, which preserves political posters and the underground press of the late 1960s and ’70s, publishes an anthology and sells subversive merch. “I don’t do ‘cool’, I do old-school,” grins Touhami. “I create institutions.”
