The world’s first celebrity hairdresser, Antoni Cierplikowski, known as 'Antoine', will have a monument in his honour placed in the town where he was born 130 years ago.
A fund-raising campaign begins in Sieradz, central Poland, this weekend.
Jan Pietrzak, a local activist, says that “a man who, at the start of the twentieth century, with five roubles in his pocket, left this backwater locality and scored an overwhelming success in the capitals of the modern world” deserves to be honoured with a monument.
Antoni Cierplikowski learnt hairdressing from his uncle as a teenager. At 17, he left for Paris and became known as Monsieur Antoine.
He introduced the short bob cut, the shingle cut and the ‘garconne’ style and his clients included Coco Chanel, Edith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Marlena Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, Mata Hari, Brigitte Bardot and Eleonora Roosevelt.
In 1924, he opened a salon in New York which became the most fashionable hair salon in America.
Hairdressing manuals include Antoine among the most important personalities in the history of the profession.
An eccentric, he dyed his dog’s hair blue and used to sleep in a glass coffin.
In 1973, after the death of his wife, Monsieur Antoine moved to Sieradz in Poland, where he died in July 1976.
He is buried at the local cemetery. One of the oldest towns in Poland, with a history going back to the 12th century, Sieradz has around 45, 000 inhabitants. (mk/pg)
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Ewa Malcher
