Why We Love Vidal Sassoon

  Before there was Jonathan Antin of Blow Out, before there was Frederic Fekkai, before there was Jose Ebert with his scraggly pony tail and cowboy hat, before all of the modern celebrity hairstylists there was Vidal Sassoon. When you talk about Vidal Sassoon with a hairstylist, you will be hard pressed not to find one that gets a little misty at the mention of his name. To really understand why your stylist worships this man (and why you should too) we have to go back in time over half a century ago….

  In the first part of the last century hair was all about the style. People who could afford it would visit their beautician weekly to have their hair permed, fingerwaved, pin-curled, set, and generally tortured into a style that was currently in fashion. They then would try to maintain that style until they could make it back to the beauty shop where they where brushed out and shampooed. Then the whole cruel cycle would start again.

  Into this business of hair styling came a young Jewish boy, Vidal, from London. His family's poverty did not permit Sassoon to follow his first ambition, to become an architect. "I thought if I had to do hairdressing”, said Sassoon, “I'd try and be the best I could at it." As Vidal Sassoon developed a plan to cut hair geometrically in the 1950's, he was inspired by the Bauhaus Architecture and Design School. The early Bauhaus introduced a revolutionary design principal: form follows function. Simple, functional geometry placed the emphasis on the natural beauty inherent in quality building materials. The cut became the design, and styling that detracted from the cut diminished the design. First came the Five-point bob.

Then came the A-line bob.

  In the 1960's Sassoon's cutting technique liberated women from rollers, pin curls, and a helmet of hair spray. Mia Farrow's $5,000 Vidal Sassoon haircut for Rosemary's Baby (released in 1968) illustrated a new appreciation of the haircut.

  Applying intelligent and functional modern design principles to hair design, he invented the precision haircut, and because of this he will always be the father of modern hairdressing.

Vidal Sassoon 2009

 

 ' Hair is nature's biggest compliment and the treatment of this compliment is in our hands. As in couture, the cut is the most important element... haircutting simply means design and this feeling for design must come from within.'    - Vidal Sassoon

  Check out Envy: a boutique salon to see which stylists have Sassoon training.