22 Facts About Mr Kenneth

Kenneth Everette Battelle, more usually known as Mr Kenneth, was an American hairdresser from the 1950s until his death.

Sometimes described as the world's first celebrity hairdresser, Kenneth achieved international fame for creating Jacqueline Kennedy's bouffant in 1961.

Mr Kenneth counted Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and many of America's most high-profile socialites such as Brooke Astor and Happy Rockefeller among his clients.

Mr Kenneth Everette Battelle was born in Syracuse, New York, the eldest son with four younger sisters.

Mr Kenneth's father was a shoe salesman, who divorced his mother when Kenneth was 12, leaving their son to support his family through cooking and washing dishes, selling beer and working as an elevator operator.

Mr Kenneth was at the Starlet Beauty Bar for four years, where he developed a well-received 1930s-inspired variation on the bob cut called the 'club cut'.

On July 1,1950, Mr Kenneth moved to Manhattan, New York, where he was offered a job by Elizabeth Arden in Lexington, Kentucky.

Mr Kenneth first met Jacqueline Kennedy through Rubinstein in 1954, when the newly-wed Mrs Kennedy dropped in to see her usual hairdresser, Lawrence, and found he was off work sick.

Mr Kenneth stepped in, and by suggesting his unknown-to-him client grow out her unflattering short, layered and curly "Italian cut" hairstyle, he and Kennedy embarked upon a successful client-and-stylist partnership.

Rather than imitate these immobile coiffures, Mr Kenneth wanted to give Kennedy and his other clients soft-looking, lustrous, full heads of hair that resembled fabric and reflected light, and that moved with the client's head yet fell back into shape.

Mr Kenneth was employed to head up the salon, which became the most important hairdressing venue in New York.

Mr Kenneth rescued her overdyed red hair, which Kendall said made her "look like Danny Kaye in drag", cutting it short and tinting it back to the original color, creating a coiffure that became an international sensation, with many women queueing outside the salon to have their hair done the same way.

Mr Kenneth softened, smoothed and straightened Monroe's hair, and became her hairdresser of choice while she lived in New York, plus travelled with her to Chicago for the Some Like It Hot premiere in March 1959.

Mr Kenneth's hairstyles were a key part of Jacqueline Kennedy's look, with judicious use of hairspray to ensure that her hair did not readily blow out of position, but just enough loose tendrils to avoid a wholly immobile look.

Jacqueline's hairstyle was described as a "grown-up exaggeration of little girls' hair", and cited as evidence for Mr Kenneth having "killed off the hat".

In 1963 Mr Kenneth left Lilly Dache and opened his own salon at 19 East 54th Street.

In 1962 Mr Kenneth found his ideal backer in the form of the Glemby Company, who were a salon-and-beauty-supply firm, and took out the lease on 19 East 54th Street.

The salon, simply known as Mr Kenneth, officially opened on March 4,1963.

In 1986, Thomas Morrissey, Mr Kenneth's colorist, opened his own salon, taking with him many members of Mr Kenneth's staff as well as some of his clients, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Mr Kenneth rented six chairs in a beauty parlor in the Helmsley Palace Hotel for two years, followed by one third of his staff, and after two years, relocated to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

In 2002 Mr Kenneth chose Kevin Lee, employed as a stylist since 1987, to be his creative director and regenerate the salon to attract a younger clientele.

Mr Kenneth died on May 12,2013, at his home in Wappingers Falls, New York.