Someone once said that the true aristocracy of a country is not measured in its noble titles, but in the way its citizens leave an indelible mark on the soul of their time. And if we talk about indelible traces, few names shine with the glow of Ruphertthe hair sorcerer, the visionary who understood that a haircut was not only a beauty ritual, but an act of power, transformation and destination.
This Saturday, February 1, the Mediterranean breeze of Valencia took with him the last exhalation of a man who was born to convert the art of hairdressing into a show of pure magic. Ruphert, that name that was once invoked with the devotion with which an oracle is called – “Ruphert, I need you” – He went out leaving behind a glamor wake, provocation and genius that does not know oblivion.
His story is that of an unredeemed self -taught, a challenging soul that refused to be what the gray of his time had arranged for him. Because Ruphert was not a simple hairdresser, but the demiurge of an era in which beauty began to be a manifesto of freedom.
From Tomelloso to the Olympus of the hairdresser
He was still a child when Tomelloso’s infinite plain began to be insufferable. The little Ruphert, with just fourteen, looked at the horizon line and understood that his life was beyond those fields of vineyards and wrapped houses, beyond the routine of those who resign themselves to the stillness of the established.
With the courage of those who have no more capital than their talent, he left for Madrid. There, among the mirrors of the hairdressing of Di Stefano, he learned the secrets of the trade, but, above all, he understood that the true skill of a hairdresser does not lies only in the scissors or in the dye brushes, but in the ability to read The soul of who sits in the armchair, in the gift to transform fears into boldness, insecurities in splendor.
The gods of the show, who are never indifferent to greatness, soon surrendered to their charm. Lola Floresthe indomitable pharaona, he entrusted his mane like who puts his destiny in the hands of a prophet. Rocío Jurado He let his curls go through the alchemy of his fingers. And the royalty of beauty, that which is not measured in blue blood, but in charisma and magnetism, began to parade through its living room.
The genius that domesticated irreverence
If a traditional hairdresser conforms to follow trends, a visionary creates them. And Ruphert was the architect of one of the most emblematic hair revolutions of the eighties: “for the fried“. Those waves in Zigzag that seemed to capture the electricity of a convulsive and challenging era were his masterpiece. The television stars, the singers who filled stadiums and the women who understood that a good hairstyle could be a cry of independence To his art.
But his revolution did not end there. In a country where eyebrows were still raised in the face of any gesture of modernity, Ruphert broke with one of the most sacred norms of the guild: the segregation of sexes in the beauty salons. With an impudence that only the pioneers have, he turned their hairdressing into the first unisex in Spain, a temple where men and women, without gender distinction, came in search of the metamorphosis that only he could give them.
It wasn’t just an artist hairdresser. Among their clients were politicians and military of the highest sphere, although many of them preferred that their passage through their living room would be in the gloom of confidentiality. “Franco said: ‘I like to see how this young man cuts his hair’“He ever remembered, without hiding the irony of having passed the scissors through the temples of those who dictated the fate of a country.
Grace Kelly and the art of combing royalty
Ruphert’s prestige soon crossing borders. In their chair the goddesses of the celluloid sat, the princesses of the aristocracy and the muses that did not need more title than that of their own splendor. Grace Kelly, the very incarnation of elegance, trusted his hands to sculpt his hair with the delicacy of a Renaissance sculptor. Carolina de Monaco, Carmen Sevilla, Sara Montiel, Ana Belén, Naty Abascal, Marisol, Carmen Ordóñez… All, without exception, went through the spell of their skill.
But Ruphert was not a man of diplomatic silences or empty admits. His tongue, sharp as his scissors, could raise someone to Olympus or banish him to the abysses. To Carmen Ordonez, in a televised outburst that still resonates in the collective memory, he snapped: “You are very edge and you have disappointed me a lot. I thought you were a divine and fantastic aunt. But in this country stars are created from nothing. From now on, it will be very mal”.
He was not a simple hairdresser: he was an oracle, a character of Greek tragedy who, with his gift for prophecy and his faith in the hidden, became the very destiny of those who dared to challenge their criteria.
Spiritist, astrologer and wizard of hair
He who ever entered his living room, the one who felt Ruphert’s gaze evaluating the shape of his face as a sculptor who calculates the marble before the first chisel blow, will know that there is not only a lacquer and perfume alone. There was something else, a telluric vibration, an air of spell.
Because Ruphert not only believed in beauty; He believed in energy, in the stars, in the Santeria. His hairdresser was populated with religious images, fetishes brought from his trips, of symbols that only he understood at all. “I am very spiritualist, I am an astrologer. I believe in God and in the saints. I have a very positive energy,” I used to say with the certainty of those who do not need explanations.
Like all genius, like everything to be endowed with its own light, its history went out over the years. His retirement was not a bitter exile, but the final act of who knows that he has fulfilled his mission on earth. Gabriel Llano, his friend and heir in the art of hairdressing, was in charge of the legacy he built with scissors, faith and temperament.
This Sunday, February 2, in the Municipal Cemetery of Tomelloso, the last chapter of its legend has been written. There, among the breeze of his homeland, among the memory of the women of his family who influenced his character so much, he now rests the man who turned his hair into an act of alchemy.
The mirrors of his hairdressing have been orphans of his reflection. But there are names that are not pronounced nostalgia, but with the certainty that they can never die at all. Because as long as there is someone who looks in the mirror looking in his hair the promise of a new identity, Ruphert will remain there, in every strand that falls to the ground, in each wave that challenges gravity, in each look that is recognized different after by the hands of a true teacher.
Rest in peace, dear Ruphert. Your magic does not go out
