World’s first celebrity hairdresser dies at 84
Vidal Sassoon, the London stylist who transformed women’s approach to hair fashion, has died aged 84.
In the decades after he invented the bob, Sassoon turned his swagger in the salon into a global empire worth millions of pounds. He died yesterday at his mansion in the Hollywood hills.
Celebrity hairdresser Lee Stafford paid tribute to him, saying: ‘‘Vidal Sassoon revolutionised the way everybody wears their hair today. He also made British hairdressing the best in the world – he was my hero.’’
Sassoon was said to have been suffering from leukaemia in recent years. The police officers who were summoned to the house yesterday reported that he had died of natural causes.
The world’s first celebrity hairdresser, who grew up in the East End, was credited with destroying the perms and beehives that had forced a generation of women to spend hours perfecting their hair every few days. A symbol of London in the swinging 1960s, he worked on a more relaxed style of ‘‘wash and go’’ cuts made famous by his clients, who included Mary Quant.
After training as a hairdresser’s apprentice in the 1940s, Sassoon opened his first salon in 1954. ‘‘I made promises I wouldn’t tease or backcomb hair or lacquer it to death,’’ he told The Times during an interview two years ago. ‘‘It liberated women. They could come in once every four weeks or so, rather than three times a week.’’
Sassoon’s revolutionary approach met resistance at first, but in the decades after opening his first salon, he was often working on the world’s most famous women. Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Elizabeth Taylor were among his clients. No matter who was in his chair, Sassoon was confident that he knew which cut would work best. ‘‘The customer was never right unless she had the good taste to truly know what suited her – then she was right,’’ he said.
In 1968, he won international headlines when a Hollywood film studio flew him over from London to create Mia Farrow’s pixie cut seen in Rosemary’s Baby. With his fame now stretching across the Atlantic, he became an early adopter of modern branding techniques.
He applied his name to a growing band of salons, training schools and countless products that were sold all over the world with the slogan: ‘‘If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.’’
Sassoon lived in Los Angeles with his fourth wife, Ronnie, who was more than 25 years his junior. He had four children, one of whom died in 2002.