Vidal Sassoon - A Cut Above imagine...

It was from a small room on the top of one of these buildings here in Bond Street in London in the 1950s

that Vidal Sassoon revolutionised the hairdressing industry and elevated it into an art form.

He then went on to make an indelible mark on the decade that followed.

You couldn't walk down the King's Road in the 1960s

without encountering the bob cut and geometric designs of Sassoon's innovative styling,

a look which was perfectly complemented by Mary Quant's mini-skirts and knee-length boots.

Sassoon really was in the vanguard of a revolution of fashion, architecture and design

which helped transform the look and feel of Britain in the '60s and then the rest of the world.

Vidal learnt his trade with Teasy-Weasy Raymond, the best known hairdresser of the day,

but his great hero was the architect Mies van der Rohe and his inspiration came from the Bauhaus.

Tonight, in Craig Teper's film for Imagine, we tell the remarkable story

of how a boy from Shepherd's Bush became a global phenomenon.

The name Sassoon is important because we associate it with an incredible change in culture

that was happening in the early 1960s.

What he gave to women is bigger than just being a hairdresser.

He liberated women.

Those hairstyles, as iconic as they are, they live on.

How amazing that they're still as relevant now as they were when they were created!

They were the styles which set him off on the path

to creating a multi-million-dollar international corporation.

If you don't look good, we don't look good.

You know, I'm sitting here reflecting, really,

at 81...

Who would have dreamt that 67 years ago at the age of 14,

there I was in the East End of London...

..shampoo boy,

and I'm sitting here over 60 years later

and wondering, "How did it all happen?"

How did so much adventure happen?

You go back all those years and you think of the excitement,

the creativity, the people you've met.

He had an impact on the world that no hairdresser has ever had.

He changed the way women looked.

I've always been in the position as the elder talking to other people,

so having someone you respect immensely and who's had such an impact on people's lives

as a friend is rather wonderful.

I realised that nobody had really recorded his achievements, his life,

so I thought a book was absolutely necessary.

I felt like it was really important to capture it.

When I was maybe two and a half, three,

my mother was evicted.

It was 1928 I was born,

so in '30, '31, the Depression was on.

My father had left us. I had a young brother.

Unlike today where we're multicultural, being Jewish, we stood out in those days.

We needed somewhere to live,

so she appealed to the Jewish authorities to take us into this orphanage here.

And I spent from 5 to 11 in the orphanage

and sang in the synagogue choir.

72 years ago, this is where I used to sit.

I was a choir boy.

The choir master,

he rapped my knuckles on occasion.

-HE LAUGHS

-Cos we were kids and we were naughty at times.

But they were charming services, they were very warm, very gentle.

Right now at this moment...

I don't know if I did then, I was far too young, but right now, I'm feeling rather spiritual.

There's a sense of peace here and it's a wonderful-shaped synagogue.

It hasn't changed. I can't think of anything that's changed.

I'll give you just a few bars of something that we used to sing.

We used to go, "Hallelujah, hallelujah..." And the tune was...

# Hallelu-ujah, hallelu-ujah

# Hallelujah

# Ha-allelu-u-u

# Ha-allelu-u-u... #

CONTINUES SINGING SOFTLY

What I missed most was my mum.

They only allowed me to see her once a month.

I ran away from the orphanage.

I went to my dad. It was so much closer than the East End where my mother lived.

He got me back to the orphanage as quick as he could.

And I could see that there was no caring.

I could tell that as he walked away and he passed me over to the authorities

that he already had something else on his mind.

He didn't even look at me.

And I think that moment was when I lost any love that I had for him.

I never saw him again.

You see, I had two beautiful sons.

And I always had that feeling that I wanted my sons to grow up

to be very proud of their mother.

I think that helped me an awful lot.

If there's anything you'd wish for me in the future, what would it be?

Oh, God! And this is the truth. I wish happiness in your life because you deserve it, son.

If anybody deserves it, you do,

because you've been to me, please, it's the truth, the best son a mother could ever have.

And I think I am blessed by God to have such a son.

Her life was a painful one. Mine was different. I knew nothing else, the orphanage. Then the war broke out.

'We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans...'

Then suddenly, all the kids of London were picked up and sent to the country

where we lived with cows and sheep for the next few years and very nice people who took us in.

We came back to London at 14 and the war was still on and we slept down the shelter, as everybody did.

And the Luftwaffe was rearranging the streets of London every night.

-The architecture was changing at every moment.

-'We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.'

I had a job at a glove-cutter.

I was cutting the little snippets they'd sew the gloves together with.

I always had a pair of shears in my hand, except for three months in London.

They needed messenger boys who had bikes

to take messages from the city to the docks.

My mother had remarried - Nathan G, Nathan Goldberg, a great guy.

He got me a bike and that got me a job.

The job was fascinating because the streets were blocked and buildings were down

and I was riding this bike at 14, having fun.

You began to feel like a war hero.

'And in the streets. We shall fight in the hills.

'We shall never surrender.'

My mother was always concerned. "Son, you've got to learn a trade."

She said, "I've had a premonition." "What's that, Mother?"

She said, "You're going to be a hairdresser." I said, "I'm going to be what?" She said, "A hairdresser."

So she walked me by the hand to a man called Adolph Cohen in Whitechapel Road.

Whitechapel is the heart of the ghetto. There was this wonderful little man, no more than five feet.

He asked for 100 guineas.

Now, that was 100 pounds and 100 shillings in those days

which was an impossible figure.

My mother said, "We don't have 100 buttons."

I was kind of smiling because I was relieved. I wasn't going to be a hairdresser.

I went to the door, opened it for my mother and ushered her through. I doffed a cap.

He followed us out. He said, "You seem to have rather good manners, young man. Start Monday."

He looked at my mum and said, "Let's forget the fee." So my apprenticeship cost nothing.

# Gay lady, Mayfair in the morning

# Hear your footsteps echo in the empty street... #

I was apprentice for two years with Adolph.

He was a disciplinarian and I think that had an enormous effect

on my sense of how we should progress in our craft.

Extraordinary man. Pressed trousers every morning, clean nails, clean shoes.

In the middle of a war! How was that possible?

# ..of London town... #

You've got to remember I lived in times where there was a lot of evil intent,

you know, with fascism and being a Jewish kid and getting into all kinds of problems in that area.

We'd seen the films of Buchenwald, Auschwitz. In Treblinka,

they found 60,000 pairs of children's shoes, but no children.

Mosley came out of jail with the fascists and they put on their uniforms again,

doing exactly the same thing. You couldn't deal with them on an intellectual level.

It was street fighting. And a group of ex-servicemen started an anti-fascist group.

And I swear, within a year, the streets were cleaned of fascists.

Youngsters like myself, we joined. We were given all the information -

where they would be, where they had their meetings. We'd do some damage.

'Then the Mosleyites move into London to hold a rally in Dalston, scene of many Mosley riots in pre-war days.'

There was always this sense of having to prove something to myself.

It was a very personal thing.

Oh, I once came to work bruised on one side. Someone had hit me with a ring.

As I walked in, a client said, "Good God, what happened to your face?"

I said, "Nothing, madam. I just tripped over a hairpin."

After the Holocaust, you couldn't just sit at home and allow these thugs

to run around London screaming, "We've got to get rid of the yids." They already got rid of six million.

'In May of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel, was born in a bath of blood.

'Jewish troops routed Arab forces from the city of Haifa

'in the first of many battles that would reverberate through the years.'

I found the concept of going to Israel so fascinating

that I put my name down and spent probably one of the great years of my life.

I found myself there as a human being. I didn't think of the great tragedy of war.

I just thought as a kid it was an adventure.

It became a state in May '48. I didn't get there until July.

We were in the Palmach, which was a forward unit.

There were some tough times when comrades were killed or wounded.

It was a fascinating experience being with those people

and sharing what I shared there.

Before I went to Israel, I didn't know who I was.

As a Jew, you're a minority in every European country.

It was the first time that I could truly say I found a sense of dignity as a human being.

It's a very spiritual happening, being in the desert.

And the desert has a way of making you bend to its will.

Looking up at the stars at night, you often wondered what are you going to do with your life?

The only thing that I knew how to do was hairdressing

and at that time, I wasn't very good at that.

If I had to be in hairdressing, because I had no other way of earning a living,

the craft would have to change or I would.

He came back from Israel and went to study at the most famous hairdresser in London. His name was Raymond.

'No mention of art could be complete without reference to the age-old study of beauty culture

'and the name that has become synonymous with the grooming of beautiful women - Raymond.'

Well, he was more than a character.

He had no shame.

He would do things that were so outrageous.

He once rode down the course at Ascot during Ascot week in a pink morning suit.

It was in all the newspapers.

I mean, he did things like that.

Well, I'm wearing what I call conservative blue and it's a Regency style.

I think men have been in mourning since the death of Prince Albert.

Through the years, they've been drab

and they have been what I would term, um...

the butterfly, as it were, coming out of the chrysalis amongst the cabbages.

Marvellous man. And he had a small pair of scissors.

He pruned the hair and shaped it. He angled the hair.

And he got some lovely, lovely work.

He'd come in with the scissors and moustache, the hair, the whole bit.

When he walked into the salon, nobody looked at anybody else.

It was pure charisma. What he could do with scissors was tremendous.

He taught me how to cut hair with just a pair of scissors. No thinning shears, no razors. Just scissors.

Then I had to put the geometry to it. That was later.

There was this change happening and Vidal was doing things that they weren't doing.

Raymond was cutting sharp,

but I think after Vidal came out of Raymond

and went to Bond Street, he was cutting even sharper.

I didn't have a picture of what hair should be,

but I had a definite picture of what hair shouldn't be.

There were eight people in the whole company at that time.

The type of work that people know us for did not exist.

At that time, we were doing more what I would term the traditional side of hairdressing.

You set hair, you teased it and put it in place and if it didn't stay for a week, you were in big trouble.

In '54, he was really starting to experiment

and look for where his direction was going.

Some days, if the cut wasn't going right, he'd leave the building and we wouldn't see him again.

When clients would touch their hair, they would touch it and say, "That looks nice."

But before they could get "that looks nice" out,

Vidal would smash them on the knuckles with a comb.

I was a naughty boy.

When I was frustrated about the work,

I actually did once throw my scissors in the air and they stuck in the ceiling,

so I took it as an omen and went to Paris for two weeks,

but then came back. That's the only time I did that.

Other times, I'd throw the brush down and go for a walk,

come back half an hour later, having given myself a good talking-to.

And for me, it was about being the best I could at what I did.

And when it wasn't going well, it was frustrating.

There were times at the end of the day when it wasn't a good day

and I had no-one to turn to because we were trying to do something totally different.

And I'd sit at the end of the day very often listening to Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue or Mahler's 8th.

MUSIC: "8th Symphony" - Mahler

And sit alone and ponder, "How do you change something?"

But when you found something...

suddenly...

I don't know, you lit up like a beacon,

there was a sense of, "This is new, this is going to be special."

We were drawing the attention of people

that wanted to see who is this guy who refuses to back-comb and he won't even do what we ask him to do.

He tells you he's going to do what he thinks is good for you.

I didn't want to do hairdressing the way it was done. I just didn't want to do it and I wouldn't.

If I couldn't change things from hairdressing

to what I considered would be a different form of art...

You see, hairdressing was an art form.

People like Alexander or Raymond were superb, Guillaume. Wonderful work.

There was wonderful work being done in London,

but when I looked at the architecture, the structure of buildings going up worldwide,

and you saw a whole different look in shape,

my sense was hairdressing definitely needed to be changing.

Great architects was where I came from. That was my inspiration - the Bauhaus, architecture.

For me, hair meant geometry, angles of bone structure,

cutting uneven shapes, as long as it suited that face and that bone structure.

So it meant in essence getting away from the old-fashioned...

I say "old-fashioned", but very pretty. I can't knock it. It was beautiful hairdressing.

But it wasn't for me.

I wanted to eliminate the superfluous and get down to the basic angles of cut and shape.

It took nine years - '54 to '63.

It took nine years.

They were probably the most exciting nine years of my creative life.

And I don't know how we got there because there were many lonely down times

when I'd sit in my flat and think, "I'm wasting my time."

Elaine, his first wife, ran the desk and was absolutely incredible and wonderful.

Elaine, what a darling!

I was 28, she was 21.

It was the most important thing in my life in a sense. Not the salon itself, the work.

It was the most important thing in my life.

I was so busy with my work that she fell in love with a ski instructor, because I used to water-ski.

And in the final analysis, I felt it was much better for two people to be happy than three unhappy.

He recreated himself. He wanted to be a success.

He tried to get into Raymond's a few times.

He walked in with his Cockney accent.

The imperial-looking receptionist looked down at him and said, "You'd better learn to speak English first."

There was a lot of work to be done.

You leave school at 14, "Hello, darlin'." You're talking a bit like that.

You've got all that Cockney stuff going on.

When I tried to get a job with a Cockney accent when I was a kid, nobody would employ me in Mayfair.

-People said, "Take elocution classes."

-Did you?

-Of course.

I went to Iris Warren and she said, "I work with actors, not hairdressers."

I said, "Thank you." She said, "No, no, be at The Old Vic on Thursday at two o'clock."

I turned up at The Old Vic.

She said, "Up on the stage.

"Do you see something there that you can read on a podium?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "Enunciate." Just the one word.

And there was something for me to read.

So I enunciated.

And she said, "My God, it's bloody awful, but I think I can do something with you."

So for three years when I was in town, I wasn't out doing shows, I was going to Iris Warren.

She was working on the vowels and it does work, it does help.

And it wasn't just the production of voice, it was when to keep it low,

when to bring the audience in and when to motivate your audience.

It was totally fascinating.

It gave me the sense anyway that I could speak to a crowd of people

and bring them into what I was saying and have them understand.

It's proved incredibly valuable.

Had I gone to college, I would have definitely been an architect.

That would have been my dream.

1954, we were in a very small salon. I was 26 then.

And after two years, it became far too small. It was a walk-up on the third floor literally.

Then we moved to a much larger salon

in Bond Street, the posh end as they'd say.

First, we did a white salon with a black boutique,

and then later, he turned the whole salon into brown

with just steel bars in the front.

It didn't look like a hairdressing salon. It looked like a modern art gallery.

As we were changing everything, let's change salons as well, so we changed the look of the salon.

It was modern and open. You could see from the street into the salon.

In those days, that was very unusual.

That people would be seen getting their hair done was a revolution.

There was a mezzanine floor with all these women standing.

Hundreds of people. It was difficult to get to the receptionist

as so many people were in the shop.

'In his glossy salons, boys from the suburbs give their long-suffering customers not what they want,

-'but what Vidal Sassoon believes they should have.'

-You're not going to cut my hair forward, are you?

Linda, when you came in, I noticed that your hair was combed back.

Yes, I like it to go back. It's more flattering.

-Why do you want it to go back?

-It gives me height up there.

-All you're worried about is height?

-Yes.

-Not the fact that it goes back or forward?

-It always goes back.

We don't go for what you've always had. Listen to me one moment.

When you came in, because your hair was combed back and grows forward,

what you were getting here was a part,

but it was an unintentional part.

My feeling is that if your hair is shaped the way it grows...

Now listen.

If it's shaped the way it grows and you have your height put into it,

right across the head, you'll get a much more defined and better shape.

-You'll get all the height you need and the shape of the head will look better. Try it this way.

-All right.

I'm going to cut it in a way that if you feel you'd still like it cut back, you can take it back.

Vidal would walk in the salon and everybody would be working.

There would be quite a buzz, but he'd walk in

and suddenly, there'd be a bit of a hush

until he got his first client in the chair

and his assistant was there with his scissors and his combs,

and then the tempo would pick back up again as he got going.

"All right, he's settled, he's crimping. We're in. We're on again."

Do you always insist on giving people what you think is right, rather than what they ask for?

The work is technical, but on the other hand, it is instinctive as well.

If your instincts tell you that what you're doing is wrong, you mustn't do it because you'll make a bad job.

-I think that makes sense in anything.

-It takes a long time to grow out.

-If somebody complains, you're really in trouble.

-That's true.

I think that people that try to do something a little different more often go out on a limb

if you're not trying to be safe.

But if you're more progressive and get more done, it works that way.

His creativity was at epic level.

He was just... Everything he did, every section he took, he was like a piece of art in motion.

There was something magic about what Vidal was because he would dance,

he would move, he would sweat, he would make faces. He would cut hair - snip, snip, snip, snip!

Vidal was in his patent leather slippers with his tight trousers.

He was dancing round the chair, pulling faces.

Do you have one particular kind of style that you put over every year

or is it just anything that suits anybody?

Well, that's a difficult one to answer.

I think each year we try to bring out something, we try to innovate something a little different.

This is all right for somebody my age, but what about someone 20 years older? It can't work for everyone.

You'd be amazed how with every line, whether it be hair or clothes,

a client will take something from it.

There's always something they can take from it, even if they don't have the actual line.

There must be an awful lot of mutton turned out as lamb from here in that case.

I'm going to let you stew in that one. I'm not going to answer it.

-LAUGHTER

-I hope you're not snipping too much off in revenge!

Vidal made everybody nervous, especially me.

I would feel instantly sweat coming all over me.

Your hands would start shaking.

We were told never to call the clients "madam",

always to call the clients "madame".

We were told to open the door for the client, get the taxi for the client, get lunch for the client.

He would not tolerate anything that wasn't up to scratch.

And if you didn't look the part, that's it, you went, you were out the door.

One time he sent me home because my shoes were not polished.

He was very strict.

Every time I assisted him, if I got distracted for a second,

he would take his comb, snap it on my hand and say, "Pay attention."

For Vidal to check your haircut was the end of life because you knew he would find something wrong with it,

because nobody could do a haircut to the perfection of Vidal.

So he would pick the hair up and...

And he'd go over this haircut and he'd say, "You've got to get it right

"and you've got to pull the hair, put tension on the hair and move your body. Cut it again!"

I knew we were getting there. We weren't there, but we were getting there.

I got a call from a film production company - would I cut Nancy Kwan's hair?

And she'd just made a great film

with William Holden which was a big success.

She came in, gorgeous girl,

with four feet of hair down her back.

Her producer, her manager, the whole team took over the second floor.

And I started to carve into this head of hair.

And I saw that by bringing the back up slightly

and keeping the length at the sides,

not four feet, but keeping length at the sides,

you'd get a great angle from the side and she could shake it and it would fall in.

Well, she was petrified.

She played chess with her manager while all this... She couldn't look.

And I'm seeing something.

And I said to my assistant, "Would you please get Terence Donovan on the phone?"

So Terry gets on the line.

"Terry, I think we've got something. I'm working on Nancy Kwan now.

"I'd like to bring her in this evening. Can we work tonight?"

He said, "Yes."

And the architectural sense of what we were doing, making a statement...

That's what mattered - making a statement.

And he got it off perfectly.

That picture went from American Vogue to English Vogue to Italian...

It went to all the Vogues, then the papers picked it up.

I knew then we were on to something.

I think the 5-Point was probably the most famous haircut, the most photographed.

The model in the 5-Point haircut is Grace Coddington

who went on to become Creative Director at American Vogue and has been for a long time.

At the time, I had hair a little bit longer than it is now.

Vidal was like super smooth and he had this gentle voice.

And he sort of sat me down. And I guess he liked my hair

because he started cutting it.

There were great joyful moments,

especially, you know, when the 5-Point cut really worked.

Clare Rendlesham gave it the middle of Queen - two pages.

And those were exciting moments, but the lead up to it could be terribly frustrating.

The 5-Point cut for me was the epitome of nine years of work that led up to it.

It was the last cut of geometry

that in essence covered the whole head

because you had to create the points here,

depending on bone structure, where it was on the individual character you were working on.

And you used the centre point in the back of the head and the two at the side. You had five points.

Then I remember feeling the back and feeling that it's cut right up into the hairline.

That was pretty revolutionary. It finished and he said, "Stand up. OK, shake it."

And you know, it was... It was extraordinary.

The thing about it was that the hair itself

when it was brushed any way or you put your fingers through it, had to fall back perfectly.

The 5-Point cut was the essential geometric shape.

He gave me the opportunity. He put me there.

There was him and Mary Quant. They're kind of synonymous really with that moment.

You know, I think the mini-skirt is very connected

to Vidal and how he saw her.

Mary Quant was credited with creating the mini-skirt

and this prolific outpouring of designs.

She was walking down Bond Street and she looked at a little window.

There was a photograph in it of a hairstyle and she loved it.

She said, "I knew then and there that I wanted him to cut my hair."

You came in in 1957.

I don't know why, it wasn't a custom of mine,

but it was the first time I cut your hair and I cut your ear!

And you had all your staff watching!

-And blood was...

-You cut the lobe! Blood flying everywhere!

-And you pretending...

-That nothing happened.

The Times newspaper brought out an article with nine pictures of how Mary Quant

changed the Sixties. And I was fortunate enough to be there to, shall I say,

-help you do it, Mary?

-Vidal Sassoon changed hair forever!

You put the top on it.

I can remember it wasn't just your atelier in the King's Road.

-The whole King's Road was your atelier. Do you remember one time...

-The King's Road was a catwalk.

-It was wonderful.

-Time magazine on one side, Elle on the other.

-The photographers were photographing each other across the road!

-Almost.

But in the Sixties, there was a mingling.

-Yes.

-There wasn't just the film celeb. Everybody had come to London to be creative,

-whether they were actors, photographers...

-That's right.

-..writers.

-So London became that marvellous melting pot.

-For everything.

'A young woman has changed the dress ideas and outlook on clothes of the new generation - Mary Quant.

'The artist in her sensed that millions of young girls longed for something different. So did she.'

-Everything changed.

-Everything.

-The power, the meritocracy was youth. Youth, creativity, excitement.

-They called it "youthquake".

-Yeah. And you were the head of the youthquake!

# This is the modern world

# This is the modern world

# What kind of fool do you think I am?

# You think I know nothing about the modern world

# All my life has been the same

# I learned to live by hate and pain It's my inspiration drive

# This is the modern world that I've learnt about

# This is the modern world! #

We were telling the public, "You haven't had this before. It's new. Try it."

It was a bit difficult because in those days everybody had a great deal of hair. All the models did.

We had a terrible job persuading these top-earning girls that it was worth having it all cut off.

By three o'clock in the morning they were unable to work for anybody else!

-I love this picture.

-That's not clothes, darling.

-No, but I love it.

-Peggy Moffitt.

-She was a hell of a girl, wasn't she?

Peggy could, um...

and did, act out every hair look.

-Yes!

-If she wore your clothes, you wouldn't see her for 10 minutes.

-She'd be in the mirror doing all kind of strange moves.

-New moves for a new dress, yes.

-Then she'd get in front of the camera and wow!

-Yes.

-Magic.

Nobody had cut hair like that.

You cut hair as we cut cloth.

You cut it not only on the straight, but you also cut it on the cross.

The most exciting clothes are cut on the cross. You cut hair that way.

That's how you arrived at an amazing diagonal haircut.

When you saw somebody dressed in a Quant outfit and Sassoon haircut,

you didn't know if they were a countess or if they were someone who worked in a shop.

That dramatically changed how people thought about Britain.

It was no longer this hidebound, class-oriented society.

And it changed how women thought about themselves.

They were not only liberated sexually and socially in the 1960s.

They were liberated through their clothes and haircuts.

They were no longer having to go to the salon every week to have their hair permed and set and tweaked

and back-combed. They could go into a wonderful Sassoon salon that was full of incredible energy

and they could have a haircut that they could go out, wash once a week, twice a week,

do it at home and look fantastic.

The whole essence, the excitement of our creativity...

And I say "our" because it's always teamwork.

Yes, I led it, but it was our excitement, our creativity.

..was the changes. Those marvellous changes. We were on cloud nine.

Peter O'Toole would drop in for a haircut. When Roman Polanski was in town, he'd come in.

Polanski was doing a movie in London with Catherine Deneuve.

Roman said, "I want to use the balcony of your salon. I just need it for the weekend."

Well, he stayed five days. The clients loved it. There was Catherine Deneuve being filmed

and we were working down here with our clients. And it was exciting. They found it fascinating.

I guess he felt he owed me one because about six months later

he calls me and said, "Hey, would you like to come and do Mia Farrow's hair for Rosemary's Baby?"

It was quite a scene.

Before we knew what was happening, I was cutting her hair.

There was one guy under the chair photographing up. They were all over!

Roman was in there. Suddenly Mia looks at the press and said,

"What are you all doing here photographing a haircut

"while the indigenous Americans are suffering?"

This political thing was going on and I'm cutting the hair! This is absolutely crazy.

It went into the movie.

-My God!

-It's Vidal Sassoon. It's very in.

-What's wrong with you?

-Do I look that bad?

-Terrible!

'It was absolutely nutty.'

It was Hollywood. There was no question about it. It wouldn't happen anywhere else.

I guess what it did was it brought the name to Middle America.

The energy was quite extraordinary

and that led to the sense of being international.

You started your school.

-Well, I...

-Which I thought was the most generous thing.

-But if people feel it's worthwhile, not only do they copy, but they want to learn how to do it.

-Yes.

So then you open an academy and they come from many different countries.

-Particularly Japan and the Far East.

-But also from all over Europe, Africa...

-Everywhere.

Yeah, from everywhere. And suddenly you're opening more and more academies and teaching your methods.

That's what it was all about. If someone said, "What was the number one thing you left behind?"

it was the teaching of others so they could take your work further.

Once we opened the school and we had all these people coming in from Japan, Germany, you name it.

Then, of course, New York happened. And...I came to America.

# Cool town, evening in the city Dressed so fine and looking so pretty

# Cool cat looking for a kitty Gonna look in every corner of the city

# 'til I'm wheezing like a bus stop Running up the stairs Gonna meet you on the rooftop

# But at night it's a different world Go out and find a girl... #

New York, Pier Hotel. Crimpers would come in from everywhere, different countries.

And I got these three girls and worked on them the day before and cut their hair

and got the shapes as I wanted them. On Sunday, the press turned up.

The press don't turn up on Sunday. The press turned up. We hit the front page of their beauty page.

It was wild. Suddenly there we were in New York, in New York City,

with a great salon on Madison Avenue.

# Hot town, summer in the city Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

# Been down, isn't it a pity Doesn't seem to be a shadow... #

Lived in New York for 10 years. Lovely. Travelled with just a briefcase. We had a pad in London.

A little apartment. And a little one in New York. So I was going back and forth.

My life at the moment is so much on the move, which I find exciting.

After I've been two months in London working, I get the urge to see how we're doing in New York

and I go over there. If you ask if I'd like to live in Petticoat Lane,

I wouldn't like to live in any one place for too long.

What happened in America was we were the hairdressing Beatles.

He took this team over to New York, which was revolutionary at that time because, God bless 'em,

the Americans were a little behind with the hairdressing styles. They hadn't caught up yet.

And that team, all looking like Beatles and mini skirts on the girls up to here,

really was the word on the street.

It just happened that, around about the Sixties,

most of our guys were heterosexual.

And I had to have staff meetings because I said, "Listen, fellas,

"we're professionals. You've got to stop sleeping with the clients!"

You've got to remember it was the days of extraordinary sexual freedoms.

Penicillin cured everything!

It was the wildest salon.

All the hairdressers were really all pretty hot! Kind of like the movie Shampoo.

It was all hands, everywhere.

Vidal had beautiful girlfriends, always, and they always had, of course, gorgeous hair!

Vidal had become a major celebrity. He was on talk shows, Mike Douglas, he was on The Tonight Show,

he was the mystery guest on What's My Line?

We'll let the audience at home know exactly what your name is and what your line is.

-Do you represent men's fashions in England?

-Do you have...

anything to do with handling fabrics?

-Mr X, do you have anything to do with hair?

-Yes!

-Oh, it's Sassoon!

-That's right!

APPLAUSE

-Actually, I came here this time not to work, but to marry an American girl.

-Ah!

We moved probably the summer of '68. We were going back and forth for some time.

But it was about a year and a half after we got married

that we moved to New York and then Catya, our daughter, was born in 1968.

All the kids were born in New York.

We lived in a little apartment, so it was an interesting time.

He was a good dad and he used to come home in the middle of the day

and pick up one of the kids and take them on his shoulders to Central Park, you know.

And he was very much involved with being a father.

I was in New York until I was three.

He used to take me and my older sister out

and throw me on his shoulders and run around the city. That's one of my first memories.

'A hairdresser's life is not all frills, perfume and half a crown slipped in a back pocket.

'For Sassoon, the next best thing to a well-cut head is a well-built body.'

Always take time out to look after yourself. Always. If your body is not right, your mind will react.

If your mind isn't right, your body will react. You have to work on developing the mind if you can.

The only thing I regret not having is four years at a great college to expand the mind to take in more.

But, physically, I was always swimming. I always made sure I worked out,

took massage. And it worked for me. I could work 14 hours a day.

I think in any industry or craft, art, you need to spend more time at it

if you want to become good.

It's not a 9 to 5 thing. It could be a 14-hour day,

by the time you finish with your models. Then you work the following day. I was very careful with food.

I exercised, always have.

So it's important to stretch the back out as far as you can.

Stretch it out. Stretch it out. Stretch it out.

It's a wonderful feeling to have the agility

not quite of your youth, obviously,

but nevertheless have the agility to move like a younger person.

And I love this. I think this stretching is marvellous.

I started doing pilates about 25 years ago. Some of these stretches come from it.

-Bring your legs up, get them out straight...

-APPLAUSE

..bring them in, out.

One leg out and...

..here we go again.

-How old are you?

-55.

-Not bad, is it?

I'm immediately attracted and fascinated by marvellous hair. And the people that wear it!

We call it Sassooning. I'm Vidal Sassoon and if you don't look good, we don't look good.

Vidal said, "I want to figure out a way to earn a living while other people are sleeping."

The obvious was products.

Quite simply, we feel there are four steps to beautiful hair.

'I met a man called Don Sullivan and we talked about developing a product company.

'Totally simple, totally different. I was about as excited about the packaging

'as I was about the products.'

But it changed an industry - his way of working and his way of thinking.

Hairdressers bringing out products today must remember he was first.

He had this worldwide, billion-dollar product enterprise, which again is very far-seeing.

The salons were growing, the schools were growing, England was growing, Europe was growing.

Our biggest success was in Japan,

China. They loved it. They absolutely loved it.

# It's really great to look your best More beautiful each day

# With silky, sexy, shiny hair The Vidal Sassoon way

# Cos if you don't look good We don't look good We take pride in you

# If you don't look good We don't look good Vidal Sassoon! #

It seems like it happened overnight, but it took so long to get the products off the ground

and build a company. We eventually moved from New York to California.

We thought maybe it would be an easier lifestyle for the kids.

I was concerned about it because I grew up here

and I've seen a lot of marriages go under.

I don't know if you can blame Los Angeles, but I had a fear.

# Yeah, the summer of last year... #

It went very swimmingly for a while.

We were doing things that were quite extraordinary. We had a best-selling book.

It was number three in the country, the book. It was one of the first of its kind.

Beverly was terrific with yoga and there's marvellous pictures of her doing yoga.

Of course, I was always into exercise. We were very much into foods that kept us healthy.

And our lifestyle.

We portrayed that in a book. People seemed to like it.

People wanted to buy it. It actually sold 300,000 copies in the first year.

And in 18 months, 400,000 copies were sold.

It's pretty extraordinary for a health book.

They're going to co-host the show. Here are two people whose life makes them truly beautiful people -

Vidal and Beverly Sassoon. Welcome them, please.

'She was excellent on television. And when we worked the country with the book,

'she was pretty terrific. She really knew her stuff.'

This TV station was putting together a week of TV programming and every night they had a different couple.

Wednesday is...

Vidal Sassoon

and Beverly Sassoon!

Your hosts tonight on the Monday through Friday Show.

-Aha! This is...

-Good evening.

-This is going to be a fun evening.

-I have a great feeling about it. Go ahead.

-What do you think, folks?

This is George Hamilton's pyjamas.

'We enjoyed it. We did many, many episodes. It was very successful.'

# Your new day

# It's your new day... #

I was offered a show. I did 200 of them. Had some marvellous guests.

Here he is - Vidal Sassoon!

-What's your question?

-What is the price of a "Vital Sasson" hairstyle?

-A Vital...?!

I don't want anybody else!

-Jumping and keeping in shape.

-I wouldn't miss this opportunity. Here goes.

Well, I was going to...

APPLAUSE

'I was having a ball,'

except I was neglecting what I'd started.

The products were going, but there was no one out there promoting them.

I had to make a big decision after 200 shows.

I couldn't desert my own company.

Thank you, Vidal.

You've changed, Vidal.

-Thank you, Vidal.

-Because you use more styling products, it's harder to get your hair clean and sexy.

-New advanced salon formula!

-ALL: Thank you, Vidal!

-If you don't look good, we don't look good!

I think the moving from New York to LA

it was very good for products, but it wasn't a very good move, family-wise.

In the red section, international style setter, there he is, Mr Vidal Sassoon and Beverly Sassoon!

I think it suddenly struck her,

the lack of her own identity. It all became a wee bit too much for her emotionally.

I'm pretty much non-confrontational. I don't like it.

If I had learned that then, I'd have been able to maybe deal with some of Vidal's behaviour

and some of what I perceived to be his anger directed towards me.

But that's eventually what drove me away.

I think one of the most difficult periods for me,

personally, was the divorce.

We had three children in New York, we'd adopted David in Los Angeles.

Adopting David, he was three years old.

I think my past had something to do with that.

Growing up in an orphanage, it would be nice, wouldn't it, if you took a young child,

joined with our family?

The divorce really affected me and affected my judgment.

I made certain decisions I may not have made

had I not been in the state of mind I was in at the time.

I guess, had I had it all to do again,

I would not have been seduced to sell the product company.

Vidal was absolutely the creator of the celebrity-endorsed hair product line.

He did not intend for it to go mass, but it did very quickly.

It was in such demand that it was uncontrollable,

so he went with it.

Then a company came along - and I'm not mentioning names here -

but a company came along... Richardson-Vicks it was, actually.

And with all kinds of promises about, "We're going international. You're our only line.

"And we'll take over. You'll go out and do shows in different countries."

They really wound me up.

And we went with Richardson-Vicks.

Of course, about a year and a half later, they sold out to Procter and Gamble.

So all their fancy stories were at an end.

You can't go through life, you cannot, it's impossible to go through life on a fairy tale.

Something that just happens and it's all marvellous.

The downs come and you've got to steel yourself.

Five years ago,

New Year's Eve, my daughter Catya, my eldest girl,

who I absolutely adored, she was very special to me,

er...she OD'd.

And, um...

..it was the worst moment. They called me New Year's Day

and said she'd passed away that night before.

Many parents have gone through this and they know the feeling.

It's a hard one to work through. Yeah.

I'll never enjoy a New Year's Day

and I'll walk away and get lost somewhere and come back on January 2nd.

If you read Vidal's life, it would read as if it was quite tough.

He took what was presented and used it to motivate himself. Absolutely.

That's part of his legacy as well.

That you can, in fact, grow up in tough times.

You can create a path that hasn't been created.

You can do something new in any field and you can help people.

-What have you got there?

-This is the book.

-The book?

-This is essentially your life on the wall.

-I don't know if I want to see it!

Well, you've lived it.

-Wow.

-Pretty impressive, isn't it?

-Yeah, it really is.

'You get to a certain point in your life and aware that each day is a special day

'because you understand there are less of them to come.

'And I think he's very, very, very aware of that.'

I have made him and his family a home

and he has expanded my horizons.

He is... He has shown me more of the world.

'And he's shown me what one individual can do for the world.'

'I met Ronnie... Actually, I was 62.

-HE CHUCKLES

-'And she was a delightful thirty...something.

'There's something about her that is hard to describe. A fascination. I've been fascinated ever since.

'Before I met Ronnie, I'd finished with women. To be with a woman permanently was never happening.

'She came along and my life changed.

'Ronnie, because of a very good mind

'and a fascination for new things, has made my life so much more interesting. No question about it.'

Oh, wow.

CHEERING

You look lovely, all of you.

Lovely. Shake it.

'He has the most incredible political conscience

'of anyone that I've known.'

He loves the idea of generosity and a community. He loves the idea of giving something back.

We're involved in something truly exciting in New Orleans.

I think the soul of America is at risk. There's so many areas where greed has taken over,

where mistakes have been made.

What's happened in New Orleans is a total disregard for the fundamental human instincts.

275,000 people

wiped out.

No homes. Under water. Wiped out.

The government that says, "We're not in the real estate business." What an outrage!

I became so angered at this and said, "Look, let's get the hairdressing craft behind this."

He's given so much to hairstylists of the world,

Hairdressers Unlocking Hope was a way for them to support him

-and with their help he was able to build 23 houses.

-'This is not charity.

'This is the feeling for our fellow citizens who are in need.

'Philanthropy from an individual point of view is absolutely essential.

'It also gives you a spiritual awareness that I can't get from religions any more.

'Tomorrow's going to be a day that's never happened to me before.

'Actually going to the Palace

'to receive a CBE from the Queen.

'The more I think about it, the more I sense

'that the tribute belongs to the craft. It truly belongs to all those people

'that have helped me so much in the development of our craft.

'I would love to see some young person with enormous energy create something new,

'create something different.

'When everybody tells you, the doubters tell you it can't be done, you'll go broke

'or all kinds of tragedies will come your way, nonsense.'

Sassoon's effect was so far-ranging, the geometry of it,

that you would probably have said it was the iPod of its day. It was the Apple. Design, design, design.

Every single hairdresser owes that guy something.

It's not just the geometric haircut we have to thank him for.

It's today's hairdressing.

Vidal Sassoon, it's a kind of...

blueprint to me of sort of modern hairdressing.

The images that I saw when I walked into the salon the first time, the pictures on the wall,

are still a part of my library.

-He revolutionised not just hair, but fashion.

-I think it's recognised how important Vidal has been

to fashion history.

That in itself, the influence of that fashion and the whole persona with the hairdo and makeup

had a huge influence on architecture, design in general,

furniture, films. Our whole visual world.

Here was a hairdresser doing something incredibly important.

Those hairstyles, as iconic as they are, live on.

How amazing that they're still as relevant now as they were when they were created.

This started a revolution and it led into

the real revolution, which was letting hair be.

Every straight bob is still done in the spirit of Sassoon.

The shapes can come and go, but what he gave to women,

the way he probably liberated women, is bigger than just being a hairdresser.

If you can get to the root of who you are, the gut of who you are,

and make something happen from it, in whatever field,

my sense is you're going to surprise yourself.

# It's wonderful

# It's marvellous

# That you would care for me

# It's very nice

# It's paradise

# It's all I want to see

# You made my life so glamorous

# Don't blame me for feeling amorous

# It's wonderful

# It's marvellous

# That you would care

# For me

# It's wonderful

# It's marvellous

# That you would care for me

# It's very nice

# It's paradise

# It's all I want to see

# You made my life so glamorous

# Don't blame me for feeling amorous

# It's wonderful

# It's marvellous

# That you would care

# For me. #