Fashion Reverie looks back at iconic hair stylist Vidal Sassoon. Credited for having created the modern, geometric, Bauhaus-inspired style, sometimes known as the “wedge bob,” Sassoon’s style became associated with the mod 60s style and the liberated woman of that time. Vidal Sassoon’s “wash and wear” hairstyles liberated women from having to take weekly trips to salons to have their styles. Grace Coddington, creative director of American Vogue and former Sassoon model says it best, “”he changed the way everyone 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 [Sassoon’s five-point cut] 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 shake it.”
Sassoon also developed a line of hair products that racked in at its peak 10s of millions a year. In 1983, when Vidal Sassoon sold his company to Richardson-Vick, Sassoon’s products and salons were grossing $113,000,000 a year.
Vidal Sassoon was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2009. And his biography Vidal: The Autobiography was released in 2010 by Macmillan.
Vidal Sassoon
Vidal Sassoon died at his home in Los Angeles on May 9, 2012.
—Staff
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