CELEBRATING 65 YEARS I

CELEBRATING 65 YEARS OF SASSOON

TO CELEBRATE 65 YEARS OF SASSOON, WE TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE LEGENDARY HAIR BRAND CREATED BY VIDAL SASSOON, A REBELLIOUS YOUNG LONDONER WHO CHANGED THE WORLD WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS.

VIDAL SASSOON CBE 1928 - 2012 The first Vidal Sassoon salon at 108 Bond St London opened in October 1959 and quickly became the city’s flashpoint for hair creativity and the go-to destination for the fashion forward. Sassoon’s pioneering vision of ‘Hair in geometry; squares, triangles, oblongs and trapezoids’ was based on the modernist principles of the Bauhaus, an inter-war German design school.

The Bauhaus design school was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 and included amongst it teaching faculty, design luminaries such as Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Johannes Itten and Wassily Kandinsky. The Bauhaus style would become one of the most influential concepts in modern design and the re-interpretation of Bauhaus principles by Vidal, is now considered so exceptional that Sassoon geometric cuts were included in the 2019 exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Bauhaus school.

Sassoon took the Bauhaus philosophy of ‘form follows function’ and applied it to hair, creating the strikingly modern Five Point cut in 1963 as worn by fashion designer and collaborator Mary Quant. This was the cut that rid the hairdressing world of everything superfluous - hair was pared down to five points of pure line; two framing each side of the face, two at the back and one at the nape of the neck. This flawless exercise in geometry achieved Sassoon’s goal of hair as ‘material in motion.’

On cutting the first Five Point for British Fashion Editor Clare Rendlesham, Vidal said, ‘Suddenly I knew without any doubt that I was on to a winner as did everybody else in the salon. The stylists stopped work and watched. The customers crowded round in their gowns catching my excitement. And I kept on cutting, cutting, cutting.’

Grace Coddington Creative Director of American Vogue magazine, who herself wore the Five Point cut, captured in the iconic picture by British photographer David Montgomery, said ‘It was a cut so precisely worked out that, no matter which way I shook it, there was never a hair out of place.’

Quant was so pleased with her hair, she invited the hairdresser to style her next show, and the combination of Sassoon cuts with Quant’s skinny-rib sweaters, mini-skirts and knee-boots encapsulated the swinging ‘60s London look. Mary Quant said of Vidal, ‘He and I were a team: we complemented each other. Vidal’s hairstyles were the perfect balance to my designs.’

Sassoon became a favourite with the fashion elite, working with designers Emanuel Ungaro, Emmanuelle Khanh and Rudi Gernreich. Model Peggy Moffitt sported the first asymmetrical Five Point cut and collaborated with Vidal and photographer William Claxton on the movie ‘Basic Black,’ widely considered the first fashion and music film. When actor Nancy Kwan had her long black hair cut by Vidal for the movie ‘The Wild Affair’. Vidal said, ‘As the shape developed, I became totally immersed. The top layers in the back were shorter, being cut layer by layer into longer sides. I hadn’t planned it… but it was a seminal moment.’ The cut was photographed by Terence Donovan and featured in British Vogue to universal acclaim.

Perhaps the most famous haircut of all, was when Vidal was flown to Los Angeles to cut the hair of actor Mia Farrow on the set of Rosemary’s Baby at Paramount studios in Hollywood. Vidal said, ‘The soundstage was roped off like a boxing ring and the press rushed down from their seats and were on top of us immediately.

They weren’t just breathing down my neck. They were damn near breaking it. They crowded and pushed, hung out of the rafters and lay on the floor. And all the time I was dancing round that small blonde head, snipping here, flicking a comb there, using the ring, jostling and being jostled, while the flashbulbs popped. It was a psychedelic scene.’ Modernist design continued to define the brand identity from the fresh minimalism of Sassoon salon design, through to the professional product ‘Brown’ line developed in the 1970s. This was a revolutionary three-step system comprising a shampoo to cleanse, a conditioner to smooth and a finishing rinse to seal and protect the hair. Sassoon also began to make the link between health, fitness and hair, advocating nutrition and exercise and promoting his love of yoga and Pilates through television appearances and a successful book, ‘A Year of Beauty and Health’. The perfect showcase for these ideas came with the role of official hair consultant to the athletes participating in the Los Angeles Olympic Games of 1984.

Throughout his career Sassoon was convinced that without an understanding of pure geometric technique, the mastery of hair design was out of reach, but once technical skills were learnt, anything was possible. Education was his passion and resulted in his greatest legacy, the ABC; a precise methodology of cutting and colouring hair that underpins the brand’s education today. Line, graduation and layering are used in combination with colour placement to create an entirely bespoke hair look with a ‘suitability’ that considers the bone structure, lifestyle and personality of every client. Sassoon’s approach considered how cut and colour work in harmony to create shape and balance; lighter tones for instance can give the illusion of more volume when combined with the correct cutting technique, or a shape can be given strength and a glossy sheen with the right line of cut and colour placement. This precise, honed approach continues to be the ultimate in hair design. Sassoon was justifiably proud saying, ‘’If someone were to ask me, ‘What’s the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?’ It was the teaching of others so that they could embrace my work and take it further.’