You may only know his name due to the line of hair products named after him, but what you may not have known is that the British-born hairdresser is credited for ushering in the 1960s era of easy-to-maintain wash and wear haircuts. He got women to retire hot rollers and hair-sprayed hair, and created more simple, geometric styles like his signature cut "the five point bob" which is still popular even today.
Sassoon credited his mother for pushing him to become a hairdresser. “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,” he said in 2007.
Sassoon was one of very few and one of the first hairdressers to gain celebrity status by having salons and hair products bearing his name. His advertising tag line for the brand was: “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”
Sassoon eventually retired from the hair business in the 1980s to become a philanthropist. A 2012 documentary film, Vidal Sassoon the Movie, documented his story.
He was married four times, had four children and was an avid soccer fan.
