Vidal Sassoon (January 17, 1928 - May 9, 2012) is a British-American hairdresser, businesswoman, and philanthropist. He is famous for reopening a simple geometric hairstyle called Bob piece, worn by famous fashion designers like Mary Quant and movie stars like Mia Farrow, Goldie Hawn, Cameron Diaz, Nastassja Kinski and Helen Mirren.
His early life was one of extreme poverty, with his seven years of childhood being spent in an orphanage. He quit school at the age of 14, immediately holding various jobs in London during World War II. Although he hopes to become a professional soccer player, he becomes an apprentice hairdresser at the advice of his mother.
Having developed a reputation for his innovative pieces, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, where he opened the first chain of hair beauty salons worldwide, equipped with hair care product lines. He also founded Paul Mitchell Systems with Paul Mitchell, one of his former students. Mitchell says that Sassoon is "the most famous hairdresser in world history."
He sold his business interest in the early 1980s to devote himself to philanthropy. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie , a documentary about his life, was released in 2010. In 2009, Sassoon was appointed as CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. In 2012 he is among the iconic British culture chosen by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous work - The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover - to celebrate British cultural figures from the last six decades.
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Sassoon was born to Jewish parents in Hammersmith, London, and lives in Shepherd's Bush. His mother, Betty (Bellin) (1900-1997) was born in Aldgate, in the East End of London, in 1900. Although he was surrounded by insane poverty, Sassoon wrote that he still decided to do the best in his life. His family emigrated to Britain from Ukraine in the 1880s to avoid the prevalent antisemitism and pogroms. His father, Jack Sassoon, was born in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. They met in 1925 and married in 1927. They then moved to Shepherd's Bush, which contains the Greek Jewish community. Sassoon has a younger brother, Ivor, who died of a heart attack at the age of 46.
His father left the family for another woman when Vidal was three years old. With his mother now unable to support the family, they fell into poverty and expelled, suddenly became homeless. They were forced to move with his mother's sister. There, they shared a two-room tenement with his aunt and three children. The small flat where they lived did not have a bathroom or toilet, forcing them to share one toilet outside with three other families. She remembered often queuing up to use it in cold weather. Their roof also collapsed, which let the rain pour down. "All we can see from our window is the gray from the tenement across the street," Sassoon wrote. "There's a bad thing around."
Due to poverty as a single parent, his mother eventually put Sassoon and his younger brother in a Jewish orphanage, where they lived for seven years, until he was 11 years old, when his mother remarried. Her mother was only allowed to visit them once a month and was never allowed to take them out.
Education
He studied at Essendine Elementary School, a Christian school of about a thousand children. He is often ridiculed by classmates as "Yid" or with shouting "All Jews have long noses." One of the proudest days in school was winning a 100-meter run at all school contests. "The drive to win never leaves me," he wrote.
However, he says that he is a "very bad student" with poor grades in most classes, except for mental arithmetic. After a session of mental arithmetic, the teacher said seductively, "Sassoon, glad to see you have a gap of intelligence between attacks of ignorance." She takes volunteer work as a choir boy for a local synagogue, which gives her one of the few opportunities to see her mother coming next Saturday.
Sassoon and the other children at school evacuated after World War II started on September 3, 1939. He was eleven years old. "It's a date I'll never forget," he said. "Suddenly me and my brother and all our orphans are training with hundreds of thousands of other children, moving out of London." He and his brother were taken to Holt, Wiltshire, a small village of a thousand people. "
First task
After returning to London, he left school at age 14 and worked as a messenger. The war was full of London still bombed, which forced him to sleep in the underground shelter. During office hours, she said, "I'm used to seeing body and blood, and hear the screams of pain" when she brings a message from central London to the dock.
At the urging of her mother, they tried to make her an apprentice in the salon; her mother tells him that his ambition is for him to become a professional hairdresser. However, he sees himself as a football player, a sport he has mastered. "I can not imagine myself turning my hair and rolling the rollers for a living."
When she took her to the hairdressing school of a renowned hairdresser, Adolph Cohen, they were disappointed immediately when they were told it was a two-year program and would be much more expensive than they could afford. "My mother looks very upset," he said, as they left the salon. "I thought he might faint." A few minutes later, Mr. Cohen called them back to the salon, then told him, "You seem to have a very good behavior, young man, starting Monday and forget about the cost." Her mother began to cry for joy.
Wartime activity
At the age of 17, though he was too young to serve in World War II, he became the youngest member of the 43 Group, the veteran Jewish underground organization that broke fascist meetings in East London. The Daily Telegraph calls it an "anti-fascist hairdresser" whose purpose is to prevent Sir Oswald Mosley's movement from spreading "hate messages" in the period after World War II.
In 1948, at the age of 20, he joined the Haganah (who soon became Israel's Defense Forces) and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which began after Israel declared statehood. During the interview, he described the year he spent training with Israel as "the best year of my life," and remembered how he felt:
When you think of 2,000 years of being subdued and suddenly you are a rising nation, that is a great feeling. There are only 600,000 people defending the country with five soldiers, so everyone has something to do.
Maps Vidal Sassoon
Careers
Sassoon was trained under Raymond Bessone, at her salon in Mayfair. Sassoon opened his first salon in 1954 in London; singer-actress Georgia Brown, her friend and neighbor, claiming to be her first customer.
Sassoon expressed his intention in designing a new and more efficient hairstyle: "If I'm going to the salon, I want to change things, I want to get rid of the excess and go down to the basic corners of the pieces and shapes." Sassoon's work includes geometric perm and hairstyle "Nancy Kwan". They are all modern and low maintenance. The hairstyles made by Sassoon depend on dark, straight, and shiny hairs that are cut into geometric but organic shapes.
In 1964, Sassoon created a short and angled haircut on a horizontal plane that was a recreation of the classic "bob pieces". The geometric haircut looks very cut off, but is entirely varnish-free, depending on the natural luster of hair for the effect. Advertising and cosmetics executive Natalie Donay is credited with the discovery of Sassoon in London and took him to the United States, where in 1965 he opened his first New York City salon, on Madison Avenue.
In 1966, inspired by the short hair of Clara Bow's famous movie star, he created the design for Emanuel Ungaro. Director Roman Polanski took him to Hollywood from London in 1968, at a cost of $ 5,000, to create a unique pixie piece for Mia Farrow, who will star in Baby Rosemary.
In the early 1970s Sassoon made Los Angeles his home. In 1971 he promoted his famous director, 30-year-old Roger Thompson, to director of the Sassoon salon, explaining with clarity that, "Twenty-five years of hard work behind a barber chair is enough!" Sassoon founded Paul Mitchell Systems with Paul Mitchell, one of his former students. Mitchell says that Sassoon is "the most famous hairdresser in world history."
Sassoon started the hair care product line "Vidal Sassoon" in 1973. Actor Michael Caine, who when young and struggling "is a roommate with Terence Stamp and Vidal Sassoon - he used to cut my hair, and he always has many models around," claimed to have inspired this, saying, "I told him that he should have something that works for him when he sleeps, I told him that he should make shampoos and other hair care products." Whatever his inspiration, the Sassoon brand is applied to the shampoo and conditioner sold around the world, with a commercial campaign featuring an iconic slogan "If you do not look good, we do not look good." Former salon colleagues also bought a salon Sassoon and gained the right to use his name, extending the brand in the salon to the UK and the United States.
El Paso, Texas-based Helen of Troy Corporation began producing and marketing Sassoon haircare products in 1980. In 1983, Richardson-Vicks bought Vidal Sassoon Inc. based in Los Angeles as well as the Santa Monica, California, Sassoon high schools; the company has bought its business in Europe. By 1982 Sassoon's hair product sales had reached $ 110 million, with 80 percent of revenue coming from the United States.
Two years later the company was bought by Procter & amp; Gamble. Vidal, who remained a consultant at least in the mid-1990s, was sued in 2003 for breach of contract and fraud in federal court for allegedly neglecting its brand name marketing to support other company's hair product lines, such as Pantene.
He sold his business interest in the early 1980s to devote himself to philanthropy. In 2004, it was reported that Sassoon was no longer associated with a brand that bears his name. He also has a short television series called Your New Day with Vidal Sassoon , which aired in 1980.
Sassoon twice became a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, on June 27, 1970 and October 9, 2011, when he was also a Resident Thinker on the Nowhereisland art project.
Awards
Sassoon was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace at the 2009 Anniversary Awards.
Personal life
Sassoon married his first wife, Elaine Wood, his salon receptionist, in 1956; marriage ended in 1958. In 1967, he married his second wife, actress Beverly Adams. They have three biological children and one adopted child: the daughter of Catya (1968-2002), an actress who died of a drug-induced heart attack; son of Elan BenVidal (born January 17, 1970); son of David (b about circa 1972); and his daughter Eden Sassoon. Some sources also quote Oley Sassone, a music video director who mentions his last name a little differently, as a son but this seems wrong. Sassoon and Adams divorced after 13 years of marriage. His third wife was Jeanette Hartford-Davis, a costume champion and former fashion model; they married in 1983 and soon divorced. In 1992 he married designer Rhonda "Ronnie" Sassoon.
Sassoon let go of his son David, with whom he was exiled. Sassoon in his autobiography of 2010 describes David, adopted in 1975 at the age of 3 years, as "African-American/Asian child... with irrepressible eyes and an unbearable smile" that remains problematic and is finally sent to reform school.
Philanthropy
Having committed a lifetime to combat anti-Semitism, Sassoon started the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, or SICSA, in 1982. Located at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he was devoted to gathering information about antisemitism around the world.
After selling his company, he later worked for philanthropic purposes such as the American Children's Club and the Performing Arts Council at the Los Angeles Music Center through his Vidal Sassoon Foundation. He is also active in supporting relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. It also funded the search for education based on needs in Israel and elsewhere. At the time of his death he had academies in England, the United States and Canada, while embarking on a plan to open new ones in Germany and China.
Disease and death
In June 2011 it was reported that Sassoon had been diagnosed with leukemia two years earlier. He died on May 9, 2012 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles. His death was originally reported as a result of a natural cause, and was later reported to have been the result of his leukemia. He died in front of his family. Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Kevin Maiberger said that when the police arrived at his residence on Mulholland Drive, he was dead. A memorial service is planned for a later date.
Legacy
The reaction to his death has a number of people who know him explain the importance and influence on the hair fashion industry:
"Vidal is like Christopher Columbus," said Angus Mitchell, who studied under Sassoon. "He found that the world was round with its cutting system, it was the first language anyone could follow." Neil Cornelius, Sassoon's first soloist, calls it a "hairstyling legend."
Grace Coddington, former model and director of American creative from Sassoon Vogue , says that she changed the way the public views hair:
Before Sassoon, all of them re-comb and tidy up; everything must be made high and artificial. Suddenly you can put your fingers into your hair! He did not make [Sassoon's five-point cut] for me; He created it for me. It was an incredible piece; nothing has gotten any better since then. And it frees everyone. You can dry it and shake it.
John Barrett of John Barrett Salon at Bergdorf Goodman says that Sassoon "is the creator of sensual hair.This is someone who changed our industry completely, not only from a haircut point of view but actually turning it into a business.He was one of the first to have a line products purchased by large companies ".
Books and movies
- Sorry I'm Keeping You Awaiting, Mrs. (1968), her autobiography; New York: Putnam.
- Sassoon, Vidal; Sassoon, Beverly (1975). Year of Beauty and Health . New York: Simon & amp; Schuster. ISBN: 0-207-95751-7.
- Cut Hair by Sassoon Vidal (1984)
- Sassoon, Vidal (2010). Vidal: The Autobiography . London: Macmillan. ISBN: 978-0-230-74689-3.
- Vidal Sassoon: The Movie - How a man changes the world with scissors. (2010), a documentary film directed by Craig Teper.
See also
- Vidal Sassoon International Center for Antisemitism Studies
References
External links
- Vidal Sassoon: The Movie on YouTube - official snippet
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Vidal Sassoon from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- The secret life of Vidal Sassoon
- Vidal Sassoon: The Movie on IMDb - a documentary
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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