Gentlemen 1919
In the front, there are hair cutters; in the back, cigar cutters.
If you’re vacationing in Paris, love cigars and are looking for something different, then an establishment with the unusual name of Gentlemen 1919 is a place you might visit. It’s definitely for gentlemen. And 1919? Read on.
From the outside, on a street in Paris’ central Eighth Arrondissement, not far from the Champs-Élysées, Gentlemen 1919 simply looks like a barber shop behind a golden storefront door, with three barber chairs and even the opportunity for a shoeshine. And it is, in part, a barber shop, offering cuts for men the old-fashioned way, comb and scissors with no clippers.
But sometimes a barber shop is not just a barber shop. Head to the back of the store and there’s another door, a kind of secret door. If you’ve made a reservation, you dial a provided phone number and you will be allowed inside, first into a speakeasy-style bar with a 1920s look and feel. And then into a cigar lounge with comfortable seating and a huge selection from which to choose.
It’s modeled after the hidden, secret speakeasies that sprouted in the United States after Congress passed the Volstead Act in 1919—hence the year in the establishment’s name—formally outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
The combination of haircut, shoeshine, bar and cigar lounge serves as a kind of masculine-themed spa, says Maxime Simonneau, the establishment’s creator and co-owner, who came up with the idea and opened Gentlemen 1919 eight years ago. (His partner in Gentlemen 1919, Antoine Drieu, joined a few months later.)
“So many spas in Paris were only or mostly for women,” Simonneau says. “So I wanted to create something that men would enjoy. And I wanted to create something with the atmosphere of the 1920s.”
The decor is quite lush, providing a quiet ambiance, with much wood and Chesterfield armchairs in brown leather. The cigar lounge has red walls with old drawings and photos.
Gentlemen 1919 offers 60 types of cigars, many of them Cuban, as one would expect in Paris, but also choices from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and elsewhere, in a humidor filled to the brim with 1,500 smokes. “In France, young people like to discover cigars from places like the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua that are less expensive than Cohibas and other Cubans,” Simonneau says. “We also have vintage cigars, for instance from 2008 and 2010.”
The bar can mix a generous number of creative cocktails as well as serve multiple types of rums, gins, Tequilas and single-malt Scotches, among others. “We have about 50 types of rums and many whiskeys,” Simonneau says, including a large selection of single malts. Sales, he says, are split evenly between spirits and cocktails, and the most popular drink is an Old Fashioned.
Although the name is Gentlemen 1919, and the barber shop is strictly for men, Simonneau wants to make it clear that the bar and lounge are very much for both men and women. He says his establishment attracts about 100 to 150 patrons a day, and the area behind the secret door is “75 percent men and 25 percent women. Last night there were five women at a table,” he says, “and they were all smoking cigars.”
