Still stunning after all these years

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 14

Still stunning after all these years

When Vidal Sassoon paid a fleeting, promotional visit to Auckland this week, ROSALEEN McCARROLL met a super-star of the 19605. At 58, the man who revolutionised hairdressing seems ageless.

Vidal Sassoon now lives in California with his third wife, Jeanette. He has four children, aged from 12 to 17 years, who also live in California. His wife has an “incredible three and a half octaves” and he is helping develop her singing career. Although his company and his schools have been sold to three of his old and trusted employees, he is busier than ever travelling the world to promote the company and its products.

"If you don’t look good, we don’t look good,’’ is an expression which has come to be part of our language. It was actually the original slogan for Vidal Sassoon’s first American advertising campaign. The guy who dreamed it up was Peter Rogers, and he was so excited by his brainstorm that he flew from New York to New Orleans so he could tell Vidal Sassoon personally. .Initially, Vidal tried to persuade him to change it to ... If you don’t feel good, we don’t feel good . . . but Mr Rogers talked him out of it, so it remained . . . "If you don’t look good, we don’t look good."

Vidal Sassoon is an incredibly attractive and engaging man. Sumptuously attired in a green silk shirt with its own cravat and a Jean Paul Gaultier striped jacket and flared trousers, he exudes glamour and all the agility and razzledazzle of a tap dancer in his prime. Reed-slim, fabulously tanned, and with only the odd streak of grey (which looks like a theatrical effect) in his thick black hair, he is incredibly, ridiculously, unbelievably, but none the less chronologically 58!

His accent is mid-Atlan-tic, his charm universal. He has spent years on end talking to the media. Nevertheless, he comes with no pre-set spiel, but is bright-eyed and alert, and with his mind everopen to new possibilities. He finds inspiration all around.

“When you want new ideas, go and look in the streets. Anything young and vibrant is going to come from there. “Jean-Paul Gaultier, who designed my jacket, gets his ideas from the streets.

“Or maybe when’ you walk through the salon, you will get an idea from something the apprentice does by mistake.” A Jewish Cockney boy from the wrong side of town, he was born into such genuine poverty that

his mother literally could not afford to keep him. He spent his years from five to 11 in an orphanage. Fortunately, he was reunited with his mother who was always a strong force in his life. When he left school at 14, in 1942, she said, “You son, are going to be a crimper.” (Cockney for hairdresser). He showed no aptitude, or even any interest. The high point of his school career had been the re-

mark from a teacher who had sensed some sort of spark, and had put it this way. “You, ■ my boy, have gaps between bouts of ignorance.” He had set his heart on being a professional soccer player. This was not too far-fetched, as he had represented his county in both schoolboy soccer and athletics. But his mother said “No.” Initially, the hairdresser of her choice, “Professor” Adolf Cohen in London’s

East End, turned them away because they could not afford the one hundred guineas for the apprenticeship fee. But the professor was so impressed by the lad’s manner as he raised his cap to his seniors and opened the door for his mum, that he called him back and waived the fee. Although he was very conscious of the fact that he had to earn a living, he did not particularly take to hairdressing. He man-

aged to escape a few times, but his mum always sent him back. She said then she had a feeling — now she says it was a premonition — that he would succeed. The old lady, still going strong at 86 was, as Vidal puts it, “right as usual.” But then it was the middle of the Second World War, and the young Sassoon was very involved in politics. He spent about half his time in hairdressing, and half in antifascist movements.

They were rough times with faction fights and the occasional building going up in smoke, and he was always in heaps of trouble. In 1948, he joined a commando unit of the Israeli Army, and enjoyed himself immensely. As he puts it, “I really found myself.” Once again, mother intervened. This time it was a telegram.

“Stepfather had a heart attack. Brother in school. Come home and earn a living. Mother.” When he returned, he found that his attitude to hairdressing had changed. He discovered he had a feel for fashion, and he was determined to make a success of his selected career.

About this time, he joined Britain’s leading hairdresser of the day, Teasie-Weasie Taylor. Born in Soho of Italian and French parents, Teasie-Weasie was a fabulous showman with the sort of flair that can carry off a pink morning suit at Ascot. Vidal Sassoon found that he boosted his confidence, encouraging him to think along entirely new lines. Quite possibly Teasie-Weasie passed on his showmanship, which has never hurt his chances.

Even today, he regards him as one of his mentors. He always tries to attend Teasie-Weasie’s birthday party, a fabulous, big stag party held in London in May.

The respect was mutual. Vidal was offered a partnership, but by now he was ambitious. It was his own name that he wanted over the door.

He opened his first salon in Bond Street in 1954. The rest is pretty well history. He was part of that social revolution in Britain which saw the rise of the meritocracy that at the time broke down class barriers. The orphanageraised Cockney boy well remembers a duchess and

her secretary waiting patiently on the stairs to his one-room salon so that they could make an appointment. His salon quickly became a must for fashion models and those in the know, including budding young fashion designer, Mary Quant. Later, Vidal Sassoon and Mary Quant teamed up — she was the clothes, he was the hair. They were a simply fabulous combination. Press reaction was either ecstasy or outrage.

Critics shrieked that their designs were trying to make women look ugly and unfeminine. The public had no such doubts. There was an actual craving for what they offered. He remembers times when they worked all night to launch a new collection.

“They were electric times,” he recalls, but together Quant and Sassoon conquered Europe,

America, the world. In the process, both became household words. Vidal Sassoon made a conscious decision to pass on his expertise. Now there are salons bearing his name in England, West Germany, Canada, and the United States, and the schools in London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He launched his own hair care products in 1974.

The salons and schools are now owned and operated by three highly dedicated, long-term employees/associates — Christopher Brooker, Annie Humphreys and Phillip Rogers — who have worked for him all their lives.

Today, the role of Vidal Sassoon is that of mentor and ambassador. He lives in California and travels the world promoting the products and the image of that fabulous company which he created with his own hands and, of course, a pair of scissors.