French twist

Serge Normant, hairdresser to the stars, talks about relationships, balding, Ellen Barkin and his new book.

By David Bowman

Dec 7, 2001 | Brothers, listen up. I'm convinced Serge Normant knows more about women than you or I do. I say this and I'm Philip Marlowe's age and I have known a dame or two in my time. Serge Normant, on the other hand, is a 35-year-old gay Frenchman who is one of the most prominent hairdressers in America. He began styling hair at the Bruno Pitini hair salon and then followed his mentor, Bruno, to America and Madison Avenue. Normant soon went solo, and now he is Julia Roberts' hairdresser. He does Elizabeth Hurley's locks. You and I will never run our hands through Susan Sarandon's sweet do, but Serge's fingers will always be welcome.

"I know there are women who have their husband, their lover and their hairdresser," Normant says as we sit in a Chelsea cafe.

His French accent is thick. He is both trim and balding. The hairdresser sips coffee and tries to explain the mystic power of his profession. "They get close to women. And vice versa. I hope I understand women. I like what women represent. This doesn't have anything to do with sexual orientations or whatever. I'm not stuck on one type of woman. I like women of different ages. My way of expressing myself is women. In my apartment there are pictures of women, barely any pictures of men. I think men are beautiful, don't get me wrong."

He pauses. "The body of a woman nude is art. You know Renoir's voluptuous women? I think they're beautiful. Do I want to see a naked body of a man big like that? No!" He waves his hands and says, "Sexy sexy sexy! What happened to elegance and classiness?"

This was his frame of mind as he watched a late-'90s television show that proclaimed the death of glamour. "Merde!" he shouted at the screen. There is as much glamour now as there ever was. "Glamour just isn't the same. It used to be nobody would come out with their hair not in a do, without makeup. Now you see a lot of famous actresses coming out of the gym. It's more normal looking." He thought of his friends, Julia, Elizabeth and Susan. "Those women are gorgeous. I wanted to show that glamour was even stronger than it was. I don't think you get stuck in the past, you evolve from it."

So three years ago, Normant got together with photographer Michael Thompson and set out to create a coffee table book documenting the history of 20th-century hairstyles. Fellas, the result -- "Femme Fatale" -- is the book to get your girl for Christmas. (You could wait until Feb. 14, but why delay? There's a war on.) This is no girlie book. Sure, there are photographs of Julianne Moore and Elizabeth Hurley wearing only their hairdos, but Moore models a 19th-century French twist while Hurley demonstrates those 1970 "au naturel" days when girls ironed their long hair straight. In other words, this book is an examination of ponytails and pageboys, not T&A.

Next Page: "There is something fetching about every decade"

• View blog reactions