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Vidal Sassoon: Father of modern hairstyles

Vidal Sassoon: Father of modern hairstyles

By Caz HensleyPublished about a year ago 7 min read
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In 1963, Sassoon cut off 1.2 meters of Guan Nanshi's long hair with a knife, and the "Bob" created for her became popular around the world at an amazing speed. "The Bob" was in tune with the zeitgeist, and Sassoon revived it to become a classic that lives on today.

On May 10, 2012, Vidal Sassoon, known as the father of modern hairstyles, died of blood cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 84. When it comes to Sassoon, most Chinese people will associate with the shampoo brand of the same name. Sassoon came to China in 1997. In a shampoo advertisement filled with beautiful women with long hair, Sassoon models showed their lightness and free and easy hair, which made them look unique. This is a testament to Vidal Sassoon's lifelong pursuit of hair aesthetics: simple, sculptural, and creative. The fashion clipper, described by some as "Shakespeare with scissors in hand", changed the world with a pair of scissors and started a revolution in hair for an era.

Eight years in an orphanage

Vidal Sassoon was born on January 17, 1928, into a poor Jewish family in the East End of London, England. When he was very young, his father left his wife and son and disappeared. At the age of five, his mother, unable to support him and his brother, put them in an orphanage -- where Sassoon lived for eight years!

Sassoon was repeatedly discriminated against by his peers because of his Jewish identity. It was not until his mother remarried that he and his brother were freed. My stepfather was very kind and took great care of the Sassoon brothers. When he was fourteen, his mother had a dream that changed the course of Sassoon's life. My mother dreamed that Sassoon had grown up overnight and was cutting strangers' hair with scissors. When she woke up, she thought "it would be nice to have a trade", and soon Sassoon dropped out of school and was apprenticed to a hairdresser in the East End of London. "My mother forced me to become a shampoo boy," Sassoon recalled, only half-jokingly, when he became famous. "God knows my dream was to play football for Chelsea or be an architect."

Sassoon wasn't a standout from the start, mixing hair dye and working with bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and ammonia. But he was the most diligent student in the barbershop. At that time, there were many French and Italian hairdressing schools in the West End of London, and he spent two or three nights a week attending those schools. "The most interesting thing in the hairdressing industry is to use other people's inspiration to create new works of my own." To rid himself of his cockney accent, he took acting classes and even took classes in the art of speech.

A soldier against fascism

The quiet life came to an end at the end of 1945. It was the end of World War II, but the Nazi legacy was still breathing. In Britain, right-wing fascists, led by Sir Oswald Mosley, emerged and formed the British Union of Fascists. Mosley, an ardent admirer of Hitler, was named by BBC History magazine as one of the "10 worst British men of the 20th century". He encouraged its members to spread anti-Semitism on the streets of London. Sassoon's mother was murdered that year by one of Moseley's henchmen.

The sudden tragedy broke the boy's heart. To avenge his mother's death, Sassoon joined the 43rd group, an anti-Nazi group founded by former Jewish soldiers, the following year. "I was not eighteen that year, and most of them were men who had served in the army. They were on average five or six years older than me, and many of them had military MEDALS. And I am just an ordinary soldier." "I'll never forget the morning I walked into the salon, bruised and dirty, and a customer exclaimed to me: 'What happened to your face? 'I said,' Yes, ma 'am, I tripped over the hairpin. '" In fact, the night before, Sassoon and members of Group 43 had engaged in a vicious fight with Mosley supporters armed with knives. Sassoon also fought in the first Mideast war in 1948 as a soldier for Israel's independence. Sassoon described the time he spent fighting alongside his countrymen as "the best years of my life".

The Sassoon haircut liberated women

After returning from the front in 1950 at the age of 22, Sassoon began to think seriously about his future. He was lucky to meet Raymond, the legendary hairstylist of the time, and learned everything he could about "everything you can do with a pair of scissors". His virtuosity, affinity, and professionalism gradually made him famous. People would spend a valuable morning waiting in line to show off their "haircut at Sassoon's" to their friends.

The idea of starting your own business came naturally. His stepfather came to his rescue and provided him with 1,400 pounds as capital. Sassoon opened his first salon at 108 New Bond Street in London in 1954. In the 1950s, the soaring bouffant bun was all the rage. In those days, women tended their hair on a sturdy base and held it in place with lots of hairsprays, often taking hours to finish and even going to bed with curlers to style it. Sassoon, on the other hand, had a "less is more" philosophy and advocated using scissors and a comb alone to create hairstyles. He developed a set of ideas to guide the cutting of hair based on the appropriate geometry of the individual skull structure, creating his style of "sculpt cutting" technique.

In 1963, fashion godmother Mary Quant, who had invented the miniskirt, asked Sassoon to create new hairstyles for her and her models that did not obscure the beauty of the dress but were unique and contemporary. According to the different silhouettes of models, Sassoon designed a variety of simple but very chic short hair, which was a sensation in the fashion industry and media. Sassoon sees cutting hair entirely as an artistic creation. He loved architecture, especially the Bauhaus, which pursued a creative modernist style and claimed to have drawn inspiration from famous buildings such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Seagram Building.

Sassoon runs the salon very tightly, ordering employees to go home if they find their shoes aren't shiny enough. Once, unable to persuade a customer, he became so angry that he threw a pair of scissors into the air that they became embedded in the ceiling.

From the initial "what hair should look like" to the refinement of the technique, it took nine years. Sassoon eventually came up with his mature new concept: "Just wash it," which relies solely on gravity to maintain a beautiful silhouette that doesn't fade away after a shampoo. "I liberated women. They no longer need to go to the salon three times a week. Just come once a month." What's more, Sassoon's scissors, while liberating women's spirit, not only save them a lot of money but also make them more competitive in the workplace by cutting their hair short and short at a convenient time. This corresponded to the spirit of independence pursued by women of that era.

Built the legend of the Bob

Looking back on Sassoon's 40-plus years of hairdressing, the Bob is probably the classic he is best known for. But he did not "invent" the Bob, as some media have claimed, but rediscovered it. The "Bob" hairstyle has been around for a century since 1909. Originally inspired by the historical image of Joan of Arc, the hairdresser cut the girl's hair into a boy-style ear-length cut. When this hairstyle was introduced, it was defined as "outrageous". One is to make people's gender difficult to distinguish, "inappropriate"; It is also very reminiscent of temptation and crime: in some ancient customs, women would be shaven after committing adultery as a humiliation. In the 1920s, it was not unusual for women to be fired or even asked for a divorce by their husbands for a "Bob" haircut.

Despite the controversy, the hairstyle has a strange power to capture many female followers. The "Bob" of the 1920s became a hallmark of the modern and decadent Jazz Age. One phrase became very popular: "Bob your hair." Hence the name "Bob." According to one account, nearly two thousand women lined up every day to get this haircut at a barbershop in New York. When the Great Depression hit in 1929 and the high-flying jazz era ended, so did Bob. In the decades since, the hairstyle has languished in solitude. It wasn't until the 1960s that Sassoon, who was an expert on short hair, made it fashionable again.

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Caz Hensley

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