For four decades, Joseph Torrenueva has cut the hair of Hollywood celebrities, from Marlon Brando to Bob Barker, so when a friend told him in 2003 that a presidential candidate needed grooming advice, he agreed to help.

The Beverly Hills hairstylist, a Democrat, said he hit it off with John Edwards, then a senator of North Carolina, at a meeting in Los Angeles that brought several fashion experts together to advise the candidate on his appearance. Since then, Mr. Torrenueva has cut Mr. Edwards’s hair at least 16 times.

At first, the haircuts were free. But because Mr. Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail to meet his client, he began charging between $300 and $500 for each cut, plus the cost of airfare and hotels when he had to travel outside California.

Mr. Torrenueva said one haircut during the 2004 presidential race cost $1,250 because he traveled to Atlanta and lost two days of work. “He has nice hair,” the stylist said of Mr. Edwards in an interview. “I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature, and these are the things, as an expert, that’s what we do.”

It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Mr. Edwards has campaigned for president, vice president, and now president again, his hair seems to have attracted as much attention as, say, his position on health care. But when his campaign reported in April that it had paid for two of his haircuts at $400 each, the political damage was immediate. With each punchline on late night TV, his image as a self-styled populist making poverty his signature issue was further eroded.

Mr. Edwards said he was embarrassed by the cost and that he “didn’t know it would be that expensive,” suggesting the haircuts were some kind of aberration given by “that guy” his staff had arranged. His wife, Elizabeth, made lots of jokes at her husband’s expense, and the campaign wished the whole issue would go away.

But Mr. Torrenueva’s account of his long relationship with Mr. Edwards—the first he’s given—probably guarantees that won’t happen quite yet. And if $400 seemed a lot for a haircut, how about one for three times that?

Asked for a comment, the Edwards campaign said this week that Mr. Edwards had arranged for the stylist to give him numerous cuts over the past four years. But it said a personal assistant handled paying for the haircuts and that Mr. Edwards didn’t realize how much they cost.

“Breaking news — John Edwards got some expensive haircuts and probably didn’t pay enough attention to the bills,” spokeswoman Colleen Murray said. “He didn’t lie about weapons of mass destruction or spring Scooter Libby; he just got some expensive haircuts.” In the days after the $400 haircut first caused a stir, Mr. Torrenueva did not give many details about his client to reporters who called or came by his Beverly Hills salon. But Mr. Torrenueva says he was hurt by Mr. Edwards’s response to all the flap.

“I’m disappointed, and I do feel bad. If I know someone, I’m not going to say I don’t know them,” he said. “When he called me ‘that guy,’ that hit my ears. It hurt.” He paused and then added, “I still like him. … I don’t want to hurt him.” Mr. Torrenueva said he normally charges men $175 when they come to his salon for a haircut. But the cost for Mr. Edwards went up because the stylist had to leave his shop and go on the road to do his haircuts.

Mr. Edwards is certainly not the first politician to face ridicule when his or her grooming habits caught the public’s eye. It took a long time for President Clinton to live down the haircut he received from the stylist Christophe of Beverly Hills while Air Force One was parked on an airport runway in Los Angeles. And Senator Clinton, a Democrat of New York, had her own minor version of the Edwards treatment after her Senate campaign spent nearly $3,000 in fees and travel for two sessions with stylist Isabelle Goetz.

While Democrats seem to get the most attention, Republicans have not been immune. Campaign aides to a former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, the best-coiffed Republican candidate in the presidential race and the wealthiest of all the hopefuls, fretted in an internal document that his well-tended locks may be considered a negative. He has assured Massachusetts reporters that he spends no more than $50 for a trim.

Mr. Edwards, however, has been unusually susceptible to mockery. Before the $400 haircut, his campaign had to deal with the YouTube video in which he was captured primping for the camera while the song “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story” played.

And despite the best efforts of Mr. Edwards, his wife, and their campaign aides, there’s been an obvious political impact.

In Iowa, for example, an early caucus state where Mr. Edwards is staking much of his fortune, the Quad-City Times newspaper quoted barbers calling the cost of Mr. Edwards’s haircuts “preposterous” and “impossible” and suggesting that they would be chased by guys in “white coats” if they charged Iowans that much.