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EXCLUSIVE: Hair Artist Charlie Le Mindu Returns to the Paris Runway

PARIS — Maverick hair artist Charlie Le Mindu is taking to the Paris catwalk once again after an almost 10-year hiatus. His upcoming hair collection, to be shown on Jan. 29, is called “Skins Couture SS26.” “Skins” refers to Le Mindu’s move to America some seven years back. “It opened my eyes in terms of beauty” and diversity, he said. “It’s about celebrating this.” Le Mindu returns by popular demand. “All of my clients, the stylists I work with and the magazines, were like: ‘We miss your shows, we would love to see them again,’” he said. Over the past decade, Le Mindu has been focused primarily on creating costumes for operas or ballets and working with different fashion techniques, such as on fabric’s movement. “All the poetry behind fashion,” he said. Le Mindu spent a lot of time learning in the ateliers of the Leipzig and Berlin opera houses, for instance. Now feels like the right time to return to a Paris runway with his own creations, Le Mindu said. “I just wanted to come back and do a bit of poetry,” he explained. There’s also a quotient of fun. Human hair fashions the looks being presented. “Skins” will have a performance, as movement is highly important for Le Mindu, followed by a classic runway display. It will, he explained, be “a different way of me showing.” Some of his recent major projects were the blond hair suits for Doja Cat’s Coachella performance in 2024. “That was a big, big moment,” Le Mindu said, calling it among his career highlights. There, hundreds of thousands of people watched him work live on giant screens. “It felt really amazing,” Le Mindu said. But afterward, he desired to show new artistic techniques. “It was a good point to end the chapter. Everyone was asking me to do like Chewbaccas,” he continued, referring to the hairy creature from “Star Wars.” Le Mindu worked with Chappell Roan last summer on the hair production — including an installation — for her music video “The Subway.” He took over the Paris department store La Samaritaine’s famed staircase with tresses of all colors for an exhibition dubbed “Trichophilia.” More recently, Le Mindu has been plying human hair in formats more like sculpture and painting. “I’m really experimenting with the medium of hair and how versatile it can be,” he said. Le Mindu wanted that people close to him be involved in his upcoming show. Its choreographer is one of Le Mindu’s best friends and the head of lighting worked with him over the past 20 years, for example. Pornhub is the sponsor. Le Mindu’s last showing during couture week was for the fall-winter 2015-2016 collection at the Crazy Horse Paris cabaret venue in July 2015. For that racy collection, he took inspiration from the Surrealist “male gaze” artistic movement of the 1920s. Le Mindu initially began staging shows in London, starting with a spring 2009 collection. On Jan. 29, “Skins Couture SS26” will be displayed at 5:30 p.m. CET at La Ménagerie de Verre in the French capital’s 11th district. “I just love the feeling and the energy of the space,” he said. “It’s about movement. I feel very comfortable there.”