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Saying Farewell to Vidal Sassoon
LONDON — Under the architectural splendor of St. Paul’s Cathedral here,
family and friends gathered last week to pay homage to Vidal Sassoon,
the architect of hair.
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David Bailey, via Rizzoli
Vidal Sassoon with the model Grace Coddington, who is now creative director at American Vogue. |
“Vidal was always mad about architecture,” said the sculptor Anish
Kapoor, who designed Mr. Sassoon’s stone urn and placed it under the
dome of the cathedral.
The memorial service here was a tribute to the stylist whose crops and
bobs in the 1960s did more than change women’s hair styles. They marked
an era of feminine freedom.
Mr. Sassoon, who died on May 9 at 84, said his haircuts were inspired by
the graphic minimalism of the Bauhaus movement. His friend the
architect Zaha Hadid spoke at the service to celebrate his extraordinary
life, as did the actor Jeremy Irons, who met the hair emperor late in
life and marveled at his energy.
How did Mr. Sassoon earn this multi-faith memorial on Friday, years
after he left his native England for California and turned his Jewish
fight against fascism into support of general good causes?
In his address, David Puttnam, the multiple-Oscar-winning producer of
“Chariots of Fire” and “Midnight Express,” described the modesty of his
childhood friend and saw his achievements not just in the world of
hairdressing, but also by changing “how we think about anti-semitism.”
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Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency
The actor Michael Caine and his wife, Shakira, at the memorial service. |
Rabbi Julia Neuberger contributed to the service, speaking from the
knave of the cathedral where prayers were read later by friends and
colleagues, including Mr. Sassoon’s fellow hairdresser John Frieda.
Although the focus was on Mr. Sassoon’s wife, Ronnie, his extended
family and his son, Elan, the gathering also recognized the hairdresser
as “a product of the 1960s,” as Mr. Puttnam put it. The producer was
referring to the opportunity in that decade to break barriers of class
and to embrace opportunity.
“It was Vidal’s life, his exuberance, his whole spirit. He was such a
wonderful man,” said Mary Quant, the fashion architect of the 1960s,
whose black and white check jacket and orange bob recalled that era. The
designer Zandra Rhodes also showed off her bob — but in shocking pink.
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Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
The sculptor Anish Kapoor at Sassoon's service in London. |
Mr. Sassoon’s haircuts were a game changer. In the first round of
feminism starting in the 1960s, he relieved women of high maintenance
chignons and beehives. The wash-and-wear hair was symbolic of a new
freedom. And, as women in the 1920s had found when they lopped off long
hair, the freedom was sexual as much as visual.
The hairdresser found fame with his five-point bob, which he cut with
geometric precision on the model Grace Coddington, now creative director
at American Vogue. Although she was not present at the memorial, she
had already registered her memories in a book, “How One Man Changed the
World With a Pair of Scissors,” published by Rizzoli.
“Before Sassoon,” she said, “it was all back-combing and lacquer. The
whole thing was to make it high and artificial. Suddenly you could put
your fingers through your hair! It was an extraordinary cut. No one has
bettered it since, and it liberated everyone. You could just sort of
drip-dry it and shake it.”
To read the book, or to see the “Outtakes” exhibition of Sassoon-related
works at Somerset House, until Oct. 28, is to see the 1960s take shape.
The era was marked by the sculpted hair style of Mia Farrow in
“Rosemary’s Baby,” the Roman Polanski movie of 1968, and by the Quant
look. By the 1980s, Mr. Sassoon, whose impoverished mother was forced to
put her sons in an orphanage for seven years, had built a global
hairdressing empire. At the end of his life, his energies went into
philanthropy, including a “Hairdressers for Hope” campaign to help the
victims of Hurricane Katrina
of 2005. According to his son, he refused to allow one cent of the
money garnered from the hairdressing community to be spent on
administration.
And despite his years in Los Angeles, the architect of hair remained in
one respect forever a Londoner. He would rise at the crack of dawn,
downing a healthy breakfast of carrots, celery and apple, just to watch
his beloved Chelsea team back in England play a soccer match.
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