When you are looking to freshen up your look at a hair salon, one of the places many people turn to for inspiration is the hairstyles of the rich and famous.
This means that celebrity hairdressers are often very important not only for shaping haircuts but also for shaping trends, and the very first person to realise this was a mysterious French coiffeur known to history as Monsieur Champagne.
Despite being so mysterious today that his date of birth or even his real name is not entirely known. By 1638, however, he was a famous part of the Parisian courts, and by the coronation of King Louis XIV in 1643, the coiffeur was in his element creating the infamously elaborate hairstyles of the era.
So early was he as a famous coiffeur that the term had not been coined at that point, only becoming part of common parlance after his death.
His most famous client was Princess Marie Gonzaga, soon to be the Queen of Poland.
Much that is known about Monsieur Champagne’s life is gleaned from a short comedy play, Champagne Le Coiffeur, first performed in 1662, four years after the hairdresser’s assassination in 1658.
The play describes him as the hairdresser of the most famous ladies of the court, travelling around the courts of Europe once word spread of his skills.
He became a confidant, at once a sympathetic ear and messenger of love, able to send messages surreptitiously across the court by virtue of being close to so many important figures.
As well as this, as French fashion demanded the use of gigantic, elaborate wigs to keep up with the opulent demands of the art, he was also an expert wigmaker, and in both regards turned out to be highly influential to over a century of hairdressing in France directly, and influences the entire art in some way up to the present day.
