February 2023. The image of Édouard Philippe, former prime minister of Emmanuel Macron, has more than evolved in recent months. To silence rumors about the “illness” of which he is a victim, he decides to hold a “hair” press briefing on television, while some nickname him “the panda”.
“Here's what's happening: I lost my eyebrows, and I don't think they'll come back again. My beard has turned white, it's falling out a little, and so has my hair. The mustache is gone, I don’t know if it will come back, but it would surprise me,” explained the mayor of Le Havre about his alopecia, almost two years ago.
In the columns of Le Parisien, this Saturday, the councilor speaks on the political situation of the country – which he dreams of governing in 2027, or even earlier in the event of an early election – and the positions of his Horizons party. Throughout this interview, Édouard Philippe also returns to this personal “drama”.
“I experienced having this disease (alopecia) which was neither dangerous, nor contagious, nor painful, but visible. Very visible. And I can say, because I have experienced it, that losing all your hair is anything but neutral,” testifies the member of the “common base” of François Bayrou’s government.
-“It changes your appearance, your face…”
The physical ordeal represented by this illness has marked the politician and the man in general. “It changes your appearance, your face, the way you look at yourself and that others have at you. It’s not nothing,” he adds, to journalists from the political department of Le Parisien.
“Last June, it started to grow back, without treatment or surgery. It made me funny,” enthuses the former tenant of Matignon. The keenest observers have been able to observe this regrowth in recent weeks, during his appearances on television. “I feel like I'm going through puberty again. And it turns out that the hair that grows back is black. My daughter told me: It's the return of the panda! And that made him laugh. I sort of came back from being among the bald,” he quips.
In this interview with Le Parisien, the mayor of Le Havre projects 2027. “Nothing massive will be able to intervene (lack of majority in the National Assembly) before the next presidential election in 2027, and until then there are plenty of things to do to avoid doing stupid things that would make the situation even more difficult,” says Édouard Philippe, calling for “maximum stability if we want preserve the essential.”
