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| Vidal Sassoon |
According to The Los Angeles Times, Sassoon was found dead
by authorities in his Mulholland Drive home in Los Angeles from natural causes.
The cause of death was an unspecified illness, according to his family, who
were by his side at his death. He was diagnosed in 2009 with leukemia and
didn't announce his illness until 2011.
Sassoon was born in London and grew up in a Jewish orphanage
with his brother when his single mother couldn't provide for them, according to
an interview with The Telegraph in
2011.
"I was born in 1928 and by 1931 the Depression was
beginning to mount. My father had left us, my brother, and myself. We were in
Shepherd's Bush, but we were being evicted, we had nowhere to go," Sassoon
told The Telegraph.
After fighting in the Israeli army, Sassoon worked as a
"shampoo boy" at 14-years-old washing hair and mixing hair dye,
according to the LA Times.
"The ammonia jar was kept locked up because if you
spilled it, it would clean out the sinuses of the block, not just the
salon," Sassoon told the New York Times in 1999.
His mother eventually coaxed him into working in hair for
his career.
"I thought I'd be a soccer player but my mother said I
should be a hairdresser, and, as often happens, the mother got her way,"
Sassoon told the AP in 2007.
Shortly after, he opened his first salon in London before
eventually expanding to New York and moving to Los Angeles.
"When I first came into hair, women were coming in and
you'd place a hat on their hair and you'd dress their hair around it,"
Sassoon said. "We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using
actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure. The cut had to
be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell
back in."
This technique he described is exactly what he accomplished
on Mia Farrow, when he chopped off her long hair for a shot bob cut for
"Rosemary's Baby" in 1968. According to Marie Claire, thousands of
women flocked to their hairdressers for a similar cut as Farrow's pixie crop.
"Her bone structure was beautiful. I told her that we
had to go very short," he told The Telegraph.
In 1973, Sassoon struck a deal with Procter & Gamble to
manufacture a line of eponymous hair products, which is now worth around $150
million dollars. His slogan? "If you don't look good, we don't look
good." His empire eventually expanded to hair salons nationwide in addition
to Vidal Sassoon Academies in England, United States and Canada and three
books: "Sorry I Kept Your Waiting, Madam," "A Year of Beauty and
Health" and "Cutting Hair the Vidal Sassoon Way."
In 2004, Sassoon reflected on his life working as a hairdresser,
a profession which he calls "a wonderful breed."
"You work one-on-one with another human being and the
object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a
twinkle in their eye," he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. "Work on
their bone structure, the color, the cut, whatever, but when you've finished,
you have an enormous sense of satisfaction."
Sassoon was the subject of a documentary in 2010,
"Vidal Sassoon: The Movie," which chronicled his life and career from
shampoo boy to hair empire.
Vidal Sassoon is survived by his fourth wife Ronnie and
three of four - Catya died in 2002 of a heart attack - children.
Since word of his death began to spread, the fashion, hair
and beauty community, along with countless other men and women who swear by the
hair innovator, mourned the loss of the "Founder of Hairdressing."
"RIP Vidal Sasoon [sic]. We have lost another genius.
You need to watch this documentary to understand his importance," Nina
Garcia tweeted.
W Magazine tweeted a quote by the legendary Sassoon,
"Longevity is a fleeting moment that lasts forever."
"The only place where success comes before work is in
the dictionary. --RIP #vidal Sassoon," Ashley Jones tweeted.
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