1 · Position
Louis Alexandre Raimon was born in Saint-Tropez in 1922 and apprenticed in Cannes in 1938 under Antoine. He dressed the Begum Aga Khan’s hair for her wedding in 1946 and perfected a variation on the chignon that made his name. He came to Paris in 1952 to work with the Carita sisters, opened his own salon on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1957 — Jean Cocteau designed the logo and gave him the name le Sphinx de la Coiffure — and moved to avenue Matignon at the end of the seventies.
2 · Why it is in the Library
He was flown to a hospital bed. Three nurses held Taylor upright while he created the artichoke cut she wore to the Academy Awards where she won her first Oscar. That is the entry: a service that travels to the client, at any distance, on no notice — the definition of luxury hospitality, practised by a hairdresser, and the reason this group exists in Part X at all. He also styled Cleopatra in 1963, worked with Chanel, Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Balmain, Gaultier and Mugler, and led Intercoiffure Mondial for fifteen years.
3 · Candour
⚑ Sources disagree on the avenue Matignon date — 1979 in the house’s own timeline, 1982 elsewhere — and the entry records both rather than choosing. The salon was acquired by Michel Dervyn in 1990 and the brand in 2002, so the name has outlived its author’s ownership by more than two decades; what it now guarantees is a separate question from what he did.