Hair: fashion and fantasy - inside laurent philippon’s debut book

Hair: Fashion and Fantasy is the debut book from Laurent Phillipon. And who better than Laurent to compile a hairdressing coffee table book combining fantastical fashion images by the likes of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and David La Chapelle; celebrity insights from fashion influencers Daphne Guinness, Dita von Teese and Amanda Lepore; interviews with leading industry lights including Vidal Sassoon, Julien d’Ys and Orlando Pita; and expertly-researched nuggets of hair history? A highly influential creative force to be reckoned with, Laurent trained in 1980s France under one of the hairdressing industry’s most legendary coiffeurs - Alexandre de Paris – and now works on fashion shoots and shows across the globe, as well as acting as global artistic director for Bumble and bumble. Hair: Fashion and Fantasy has been published by Thames and Hudson and showcases the wealth of knowledge that has made Laurent one of the world’s most inspiring hairdressers. Here, we publish a selection of images from the book and share some exclusive insights from a recent interview between editor Philip Watson and Laurent, which HJi’s Rachael Gibson attended...

Hair: Fashion and Fantasy - In Pictures

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Hair: Fashion and Fantasy - In Conversation

Philip: It has been a thrill to publish this book. I work mostly in the art world and had previously published the work of photographer Jean-Paul Goude, who is a friend we had in common and who put Laurent in touch with me. Laurent invited me to tea – with perfect petit fours – and introduced me to some of his ideas and images. I had no idea this whole world was out there. That was about three years ago. Laurent: (Interjecting) It was 10 January, 2010! Philip: (Laughing) There you go! Anyway, Laurent is a real globetrotter and researched the book to the very last detail to really cover the cultural and social aspects of hairstyles. Laurent: Throughout my travels I am always thinking ‘hair’. We hairdressers are naturally very curious about the people and world around us, so I constantly keep my eyes open and find myself inspired by everything. Philip: Let’s go back a bit and talk about your history. You were doing national service when you started at Alexandre de Paris, weren’t you? Laurent: Yes, I was an 18-year-old French fireman. Can you imagine! Perhaps naively, I walked into the salon of Alexandre de Paris one day and asked if I could work him on Saturdays, which was my day off. I didn’t want to be paid, I just wanted to work there. Philip: And once you started working there as his assistant, you soon had lots of interesting clients. Laurent: Yes, the day I walked in he was doing the hair of Yvette Horner, who is a very kitsch accordion player who collaborated with Jean Paul Gaultier. I worked with Sophia Loren, Yves Saint Laurent, Elizabeth Taylor – lots of his clients. Philip: There are celebrities in the book too. Dita von Teese is one, with this amazing hair. We don’t hear her speak very often; she’s such a sort of visual presence. But you interviewed her, didn’t you? Laurent: Yes, and she knows a lot about hair. She can actually do her own quite well. In this image, the hair set in a Marcel wave but it still has movement and life in it. It’s actually quite loose – if she moved her head, it would move – and that’s what makes it so sexy. Philip: The images in the book really show the breadth of what you can do with hair, and as a non-hair person, I find that phenomenal. You’re not responsible for all of the hair in the book are you? Laurent: No, there are also images by hairdressers like Eugene Soulieman and Julien d’Ys who I admire. I worked with Julien after Alexandre – I thought I knew everything there was to know about hairdressing after my experiences in Paris, but he soon made me realise that I almost had to forget everything I’d learnt and start again because he has such a different way of thinking. Philip: You have work by some fantastic photographers in the book too. David LaChapelle wrote an amazing letter to me about you, full of praise. He has so much admiration for you and wrote this long letter which he wanted me to print in full, word for word. Laurent: Yes, David is a dear friend and there are lots of images by him in there. There are also archive images that I’ve researched. Philip: Yes – you found all of the images yourself and did all of the research. There’s so much history in  there. You’ve got ancient Egyptians and Assyrians… Laurent: I think the braiding section [of the book] is the biggest because there’s so much culture and history attached to the style. Braiding and weaving is one of the oldest and most primitive forms of art and dates back thousands of years, but Egyptians were probably the first to make it a sophisticated hairstyle. There’s so much to be said with braids; the patterns even have symbolism in some parts of the world – you can tell if a woman is married, widowed, how many children she has… all from her hair. Philip: One of the first images in the book is of a braid and it’s nice because it features you and Jean-Paul Goude, who introduced us – or his arm at least. Laurent: And then there’s Naomi Campbell and Marc Jacobs too. Philip: Yes of course, you can’t forget Naomi! Going back to the history, you also have an interesting story in there about Assyrian men curling their hair with primitive rollers… Laurent: Yes, men used to heat up these metal rods in the coles of the fire then use them to create waves. There’s also another thing that’s not in the book… Philip: Wait, there’s something you didn’t include?! Laurent: Yes! In ancient Egypt they also created curls with mud. They’d wrap the hair into the shape they wanted and cover it with mud, then leave it to dry in the sun. Then they cracked it open and the hair was set in shape. The history impacted the choice of cover too. I was desperate to use this shot of the hair being unzipped firstly because the image has never been published but also because it stands for this idea of hair history being opened up. Hair: Fashion & Fantasy by Laurent Philippon is published by Thames & Hudson.