Toni Mascolo
Co-founder of the Toni & Guy hairdressing salon chain
TONI MASCOLO, who has died aged 75, was the doyen of British hairdressing as the cofounder, with his brother, of the Toni & Guy salon chain.
From a first outlet in Clapham, the Toni & Guy franchise grew to some 500 salons with 8,000 staff in countries as far afield as Cambodia and Sri Lanka, while the wider Mascolo empire includes hairdressing academies, design and shopfitting businesses, hair products and a second salon chain called Essensuals.
Early celebrity clients included Diana Ross and Dusty Springfield, famed for her beehive. Having pioneered “unisex” salons, the Mascolo scissors were applied to Gregory Peck and members of the Rolling Stones – and on the eve of the 2008 London mayoral election, Boris Johnson called in for a trim: “He had all that wild and bushy hair,” Toni recalled, “but after we gave him a great haircut, he was suddenly presentable.”
The oldest of five brothers, Giuseppe Toni Mascolo was born in Naples on May 6 1942 and brought up in the small town of Scafati a few miles to the south, where his father Franco was a thirdgeneration hairdresser. At 12, Toni began helping out: “I used to come out from school and wind perms with silver foil and ammonia.”
Encouraged by friends who had migrated to England, Franco decided in 1957 to move to south London, where he established a successful business. But it was tough for the family because of the language barrier: though intellectually able, Toni left school as soon as he could, abandoning thoughts of becoming a lawyer or a mathematician to work as Franco’s assistant.
At 19 Toni Mascolo was working as a stylist in a West End salon called Lorenzo’s. But when his mother Maria died in December 1962, aged only 45, leaving Franco so distraught that he could not work, Toni moved back to become the family breadwinner.
Shortly afterwards, his brother Gaetano, known as Guy, had the opportunity to take over the “scruffy, rundown” salon in Clapham Park Road where he was working. The brothers revamped it as “Toni & Guy” and the brand was born; two more south London outlets followed and in 1974 they moved to Davies Street, Mayfair, where they built a reputation as innovators not only in styling but also in business expansion: the first franchised Toni & Guy opened in Brighton in 1988. A younger brother, Bruno, opened the first US outlet in Dallas. The US arm of the group was eventually demerged.
Though modest in manner, Toni Mascolo was a hard-driving entrepreneur who put in a six-day week in his salons and often devoted part of Sunday to visiting wholesalers. In his seventies, he was still full of ideas for expansion and cutting hair in his Sloane Square salon on Saturday mornings. In the Italian way, he was also a devoted pater familias and an excellent cook.
The recipient of numerous lifetime achievement awards, he was an inspiration to many other salon owners: one described him as having “turned us from artists into businessmen”.
He published Toni: My Story: The Rags-to-riches Story of Toni & Guy, Hairdresser to the World in 2015. Appointed an honorary OBE in 2008, he was awarded a knighthood of the order of St Gregory by Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.
Toni Mascolo married Pauline O’donnell, who had been a junior in the first Clapham salon, in 1970. She survives him with their two sons and daughter Sasha, who became Toni & Guy’s global creative director.
Guy Mascolo died in 2009.
Toni Mascolo, born May 6 1942, died December 10 2017