Charlie Le Mindu describes the spirit of punk as the lifeblood of his work, and it is clear to see how his hair art embodies the rebellious nature of this movement. Whether he is sending models down the runway in braided burkas, or draped in thick, animalistic hair, his creations never fail to create a spectacle or spark controversy, as he transforms his muses into surreal masked characters, as seductive as they are monstrous. Moving effortlessly between the realms of fashion, art, theatre and installation, Le Mindu’s hair pieces are equally at home on catwalks and in museums, and are popular with artists including Lady Gaga, Peaches and Rossy de Palma. Hairstylist, artist, designer… his practice is hard to define or label. Le Mindu prefers “coiffuriste”, a term coined by French choreographer Philippe Decouflé. “He didn’t know what else to call me,” Le Mindu explains, “for him it means an artist who uses the medium of hair to do whatever they want”.

We meet Le Mindu at his latest exhibition, Sculptures Capillaires, in a former submarine base in Bordeaux. The location holds a special significance for Le Mindu – Bordeaux was where he started cutting hair in his early teens, in what he describes as “a grandmother salon. Very old ladies, lots of perms and rinses”. Moving to Berlin at seventeen with little grasp of the German language, he did what he knew best – cut hair. He’d do cuts in bars after hours, and styled the club kids and drag queens of iconic Berlin haunts like Berghain and Barbie Deinhoff’s, quickly becoming immersed in Berlin’s wild club scene. In many ways London, where he spent eight years following Berlin, became the defining city for Le Mindu’s work. Inspired by the city’s creativity and the ‘new rave’ movement of the mid Noughties, he soon began to make waves in the fashion world. Launching his own label at London Fashion Week, collaborations with Lady Gaga, Lana del Rey and Florence and the Machine soon followed. He subsequently debuted a further eight collections, and worked on projects with Selfridges, Liberty’s and Harrods.

Now based in Paris, in recent years his focus has shifted from the catwalk and more towards performance and theatre. He prefers to adorn dancers and performers than models with his creations. In order to come alive, “hair needs movement” he explains. Working exclusively with the same nine dancers from Parisian cabaret Crazy Horse, they featured in his recent show ‘Charliewood’ at Palais de Tokyo. A surreal and heady immersive event – part exhibition, part rave – it featured, amongst other things, dancers covered head to toe in hair and the transsexual pornstar Allanah Star dressed as a chicken. “It was great! Le Mindu says of the experience, “I created a club in a contemporary art museum. It was really ‘me’… music, having fun, getting a little dirty. There was almost no limit”.