Jean-Louis David, the influential French hairdresser who created looks for women that emphasized practicality as well as style, and who founded a worldwide chain of salons that bear his name, died on April 3 at his home in Épalinges, Switzerland, a suburb of Lausanne. He was 85.
His son Jean-Christophe David said the cause was complications of shingles, which he contracted last spring.
The first Jean Louis David salon — the name spelled, deliberately, without the hyphen — opened in 1961, at 38 Avenue Wagram in Paris; a second location, at 47 Rue Pierre Charron, in the former atelier of the French couturier Jacques Doucet, opened five years later. Both were in an upscale, fashionable part of the city. Unlike more traditional salons, which tended to specialize in stiff, heavily coifed styles that required regular upkeep, the salons aimed to appeal to a contemporary customer: a busy modern woman who wanted hair that felt less rigid, was easier to maintain, frequently looked slightly tousled and had pronounced sex appeal.
“He didn’t like a haircut that looked like a haircut,” Didier Malige, a hairstylist and friend who worked with Mr. David on and off for several decades, said in a phone interview. “His philosophy was that you should be able to put your hands, or your boyfriend should be able to put his hands, in your hair and it would be the same.”
Mr. David styling a client’s hair. He was known for creating looks for women that emphasized practicality as well as style.CreditProvalliance
The salons were a hit: The stylists there often saw 30 clients a day.
“He wanted us to be able to work fast, clean, no mistakes,” Jean-Christophe David, who worked in his father’s salons in various capacities and later on the business side, said in an interview.
In a free-spirited era of “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said Tony Kent, a fashion photographer who worked with Mr. David on photo shoots, he was conservative and ambitious, which contributed to his success. That level of professionalism, Mr. Kent said, made him an asset at a time when not everyone was so focused.
“It was pretty volatile, what was going on, and he was one of the stable ones,” Mr. Kent said in a phone interview. “He was the opposite of that. He was somebody you could totally count on.”
Mr. David came to work on photo shoots with several other top photographers, including Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin.
In 1970, he created his own technique for a haircut with different, deliberately placed layers. The method for what became known as a dégradé cut resulted in styles that were easy to maintain at home, suited many women, and looked markedly different than many styles of the era. These haircuts had a loose feel and flattered the contours of each woman’s face. In French, a style cut in this way was known as “la coupe sauvage” — the wild cut. It was wildly popular and became one of Mr. David’s trademarks.
In spite of the exact technique such cuts demanded, Mr. David described himself to The New York Times in 1977 as anti-coiffure, emphasizing his unfussy style’s break from the past.
In 1976, he founded the Jean Louis David Group to expand his reach. The next year, in partnership with Glemby International, he opened his first American salon, above Henri Bendel’s West 57th Street store in Manhattan. The space had a modern, sleek look and offered two tiers of services: basic cuts for walk-ins and more elaborate options at higher prices.
More salons gradually opened, and their unintimidating, consistent and accessible offerings had widespread appeal; by the mid-1990s, there were nearly a thousand Jean Louis David salons in North America and Europe.
Mr. David eventually severed ties with Glemby; his salons were acquired by the Regis Corporation in 2002. In 2007, they were sold to the French company Provalliance.
Mr. David was born on March 24, 1934, in Grasse, in southeast France, to a family of hairstylists. His parents, Marie-Louise (Gérôme) and Raoul David, were both hairstylists; his maternal grandmother, Germaine Gérôme, owned a salon in Grasse. By age 15, he was working alongside his father at his salon in Cannes. He later took over his grandmother’s salon. At 20, he moved to Paris and worked at two high-profile salons, Carita and Gabriel Garland, before starting his own.
Mr. David’s marriages to Danielle Henriot-Decomis, Danièle Falke and Lynn Sutherland ended in divorce. In addition to his son Jean-Christophe, he is survived by his wife, Zhenya Xia, an artist; a daughter, Sophie David, who like Jean-Christophe is from his marriage to Ms. Henriot-Decomis; a son, Lindsay, and a daughter, Lesley David, from his marriage to Ms. Sutherland; and five grandsons. His sister, Huguette David, died last year.
In 2017, the Swiss financial magazine Bilan estimated Mr. David’s wealth to be between $100 million and $200 million.
His impact, which went beyond mere aesthetics, lingers, Ms. Falke said by email.
“His philosophy,” she wrote, was: “A woman should be able to comb herself and not come to the salon once a week. He liberated the women!”
