In Milan, a Party With T-Shaped Ice Cubes, Balloons and Pasta

On Monday evening, T Magazine held its annual party to help kick off the Salone del Mobile design fair in Milan. For the sixth year, guests flocked to Villa Necchi Campiglio, the 1935 Rationalist-style home designed by the Italian architect Piero Portaluppi. But this year, the cause for celebration was twofold: The event also marked the magazine’s 20th anniversary, and to honor the occasion, T’s editor in chief, Hanya Yanagihara, commissioned the Parisian multidisciplinary artist Ramdane Touhami to oversee the party’s design.

“There are Ts everywhere,” said Touhami of his concept, which involved transforming the magazine’s beveled capital-letter logo into everything from ice cubes to several installations on the villa’s grounds. At the entrance to the property, guests posed for photos in front of a petrol blue backdrop formed from three silvery letter Ts. And later, after they’d wandered down the gravel path to the house — perhaps taking a champagne flute from one of several servers stationed along the way — they encountered reflective letters set into the home’s stone pergola and spelling out “T Magazine at 20.”

A reflective installation by Touhami, set into the villa’s stone pergola.Credit…Carmen Colombo

Touhami, 49, was born in the South of France and is the founder of the Paris-based creative agency Art Recherche Industrie. His three-decade-long career has ranged from retail projects — he transformed the 19th-century French fragrance company Officine Universelle Buly into a contemporary beauty brand before selling it to the luxury conglomerate LVMH in 2021 — to designing types and fonts via his Swiss printing press and typography studio, the Société Helvétique d’Impression Typographique. More recently, he has set his sights on hospitality: For the party, Touhami flew in bartenders from the Drei Berge Hotel, a chalet-like lodge that he opened in Mürren, Switzerland, in 2022. The bar was even designed to look like its forest green facade.