Vidal Sassoon

Vidal Sassoon (17January 1928 – 9May 2012) was a British hairstylist and businessman. He was noted for repopularising a simple, close-cut geometric hairstyle called the five-pointcut, worn by fashion designers including Mary Quant and film stars such as Mia Farrow, Goldie Hawn, Cameron Diaz, and Helen Mirren.[2]

His early life was one of extreme poverty, with sevenyears of his childhood spent in an orphanage. He quit school at age14, soon holding various jobs in London during World WarII. Although he hoped to become a professional football player, he became an apprentice hairdresser at the suggestion of his mother.

After developing a reputation for his innovative cuts, he moved to LosAngeles in the early1970s, where he opened the first worldwide chain of hairstyling salons, complemented by a line of hair-treatmentproducts.[3]

He sold his business interests in the early1980s and began funding Israeli think tanks. In2009, Sassoon was appointedCBE by Queen ElizabethII at Buckingham Palace. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie, a documentary film about his life, was released in2010. In2012, he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist SirPeter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork, the album cover for theBeatles' Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, to celebrate the British cultural figures of the prior sixdecades.[4]

Early life

Sassoon was born to Jewish parents in Hammersmith, West London, and lived nearby in Shepherd's Bush.[5] His mother, Betty(Bellin) (1900–1997),[6] an Ashkenazi Jew,[7] was born in Aldgate, in the East End of London, in1900. Although she was surrounded by grinding poverty, Sassoon writes that she nonetheless resolved to make the best of her life. Her family had emigrated to England from the Russian Empire in the1880s to escape the antisemitism and pogroms then prevalent. His father, Jack Sassoon, a Sephardi Jew,[7] was born in, in the northern part of Greece.[8] They met in 1925 and married in 1927. They then moved to Shepherd's Bush, which contained a community of Greek Jews.[8] Sassoon had a younger brother, Ivor.[9]

His father abandoned the family for another woman when Vidal was three yearsold.[8] With his mother now unable to support the family, they fell into poverty and were evicted, becoming suddenly homeless.[8] They were forced to move in with his mother's older sister. There, they shared a two-roomtenement with his aunt and her threechildren. The tiny flat where the seven of them lived had no bathroom or inside toilet, forcing them to share the one outside landing toilet with three other families. He remembered often standing in line to use it in freezing weather. Their roof was also falling apart, which let rain pour through. "All we could see from our windows was the greyness of the tenement across the street", writes Sassoon. "There was ugliness all around."[8]

Due to poverty as a single parent, his mother eventually placed Sassoon and his younger brother in a Jewish orphanage, where they stayed for sevenyears,[10] until he was 11, when his mother remarried. His mother was only allowed to visit them once a month and was never allowed to take them out.

Career

Sassoon resumed his hairdressing training under Raymond Bessone in his salon in Mayfair.[16] Sassoon opened his first salon in1954 inLondon;[17] singer-actress Georgia Brown, his friend and neighbour, claimed to be his first customer.[18]

Sassoon stated his intentions in designing new, more efficient, hair styles: "If I was going to be in hairdressing, I wanted to change things. I wanted to eliminate the superfluous and get down to the basic angles of cut and shape."[19] Sassoon's works include the geometric perm and the "Nancy " hairstyles. They were all modern and low-maintenance. The hairstyles created by Sassoon relied on dark, straight, and shiny hair cut into geometric yet organic shapes. Peggy Moffitt’s hairstyle, an asymmetrical bowl cut[20] created by Sassoon, became known as the "five point".[21]

In 1964, Sassoon created a short, angular hairstyle cut on a horizontal plane that was the recreation of the classic "bob cut". His geometric haircuts seemed to be severely cut, but were entirely lacquer-free, relying on the natural shine of the hair for effect. Advertising and cosmetics executive Natalie Donay is credited with discovering Sassoon in London and bringing him to the United States,[22] where in1965, he opened his first New York City salon on Madison Avenue.[23]

In 1966, inspired by 1920s film star Clara Bow's close-cropped hair, he created designs for Emanuel Ungaro. Director Roman Polanski brought him to Hollywood from London in1968, at a cost of $5,000, to create a unique pixie cut for Mia Farrow, who was to star in Rosemary's Baby.

In the early 1970s, Sassoon made Los Angeles his home. In1971, he promoted his 30-year-old second-in-command, artistic director Roger Thompson, to director of the Sassoonsalon, explaining jocularly that, "Twenty-five years of schlepping behind a barber chair are enough!"[24] John Paul DeJoria, a friend of Sassoon, co-founded Paul Mitchell Systems with Paul Mitchell, one of Sassoon's former students. Mitchell said that Sassoon was "the most famous hairstylist in the history of the world".

Sassoon began his "Vidal Sassoon" line of hair-care products in1973.[25] The actor Michael Caine, who when young and struggling "was roommates with Terence Stamp and Vidal Sassoon – he used to cut my hair, and he always had a lot of models around",[26] claimed to have inspired this, saying, "I told him that he must have something that is working for him while he slept. I told him he had to make shampoos and other hair-care products."[27] Whatever the inspiration, Sassoon's brand was applied to shampoos and conditioners sold worldwide, with a commercial campaign featuring the slogan "If don't look good, don't look good."[28] Former salon colleagues also bought Sassoon's salons and acquired the right to use his name, extending the brand in salons into the United Kingdom and the United States.

The El Paso, Texas-based Helen of Troy Corporation began manufacturing and marketing Sassoon hair-care products in1980.[29] In1983, Richardson-Vicks purchased the LosAngeles-based Vidal SassoonInc.[30] as well as Sassoon's Santa Monica hairdressing school; the company had already bought his European businesses.[31] Sassoon's 1982sales of hair products had topped $110million, with 80percent of revenues coming from theUS.[30]

Two years later the company was bought by Procter& Gamble. Sassoon, who remained a consultant through at least the mid-1990s,[31] sued P&G in2003 for allegedly neglecting the marketing of his brand in favour of the company's other hair product lines, such as Pantene; the parties reached a settlement the following year.[32]

He sold his business interests in the early1980s to devote himself to philanthropy. By2004, it was reported that Sassoon was no longer associated with the brand that bears his name. He also had a short-lived television series called Your New Day with Vidal Sassoon, which aired in1980.

Sassoon was twice a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, on 27June 1970[33] and 9October 2011, when he was also Resident Thinker on the Nowhereisland art project.[34] He was a mystery guest on What's My Line? in March1967.[35]

Honours

Sassoon was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) by Queen ElizabethII at Buckingham Palace in the 2009Birthday Honours.[36]

Personal life

Sassoon was married four times, first to Elaine Wood, his salon receptionist, in1956; the marriage ended in1958. In1967, he married actress Beverly Adams, whom he met while filming Torture Garden(1967).[37] They had three biological children, including daughter Catya,[38] and adopted a son.[39][40][23][41][42][43] Sassoon and Adams divorced after 13years of marriage.[38] His thirdwife was Jeanette Hartford-Davis, a dressagechampion and former fashionmodel; they married in1983 and divorced soon after.[38] In1992, he married designer Rhonda"Ronnie" Sassoon.[44]

Illness and death

In June2011, it was reported that Sassoon had been diagnosed with leukemia two years earlier. He died from the disease on 9May 2012 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles,[46] in the presence of his family. A memorial service was planned for a later date.[47]

Legacy

"Vidal was like Christopher Columbus", said Angus Mitchell, who studied under Sassoon. "He discovered that the world was round with his cutting system. It was the first language that people could follow."[48] Neil Cornelius, the incumbent owner of Sassoon's first solo venture, called him a "hairdressing legend".[45]

Grace Coddington, Sassoon's former model and creative director of AmericanVogue, said that he changed the way the public looked at hair:

"Before Sassoon, it was all back-combing and lacquer; the whole thing was to make it high and artificial. Suddenly you could put your fingers through your hair! He didn't create [the five-pointcut] for me; he created it on me. It was an extraordinary cut; no one has bettered it since. And it liberated everyone. You could just sort of drip-dry it and shakeit."

John Barrett of the John Barrett Salon at Bergdorf Goodman said that Sassoon "was the creator of sensual hair. This was somebody who changed our industry entirely, not just from the point of view of cutting hair but actually turning it into a business. He was one of the first who had a product line bought out by a major corporation."[49]

Books and films

• Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam (1968), his autobiography; New York: Putnam.
• Cutting Hair the Vidal Sassoon Way (1984)
• Vidal Sassoon: The Movie – How one man changed the world with a pair of scissors. (2010), a documentary film directed by Craig Teper.

See also

• Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism

External links

• – official trailer
• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Vidal Sassoon from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The secret life of Vidal Sassoon
• J-Grit.com – Vidal Sassoon – Anti-Fascist Street Fighter