$5000 haircut, but still poor

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 14

$5000 haircut, but still poor

Vidal Sassoon’s highest payment for a single haircut was $5OOO when, in 1967, Roman Polanski flew him to California to cut Mia Farrow’s hair for the movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” It was a media event organised for the world press, and it was staged in a boxing ring. Although he never topped that mark for a single haircut, he and his team did sometimes receive higher fees when their contracts for their shows entitled them to a share of the gate takings. He remembers one particularly lucrative show in Japan where they all received “much more.”

In spite of these fabulous sums, Vidal Sassoon recalls that he and his organisation were always in debt, until he elected to go into products 12 years ago. At this stage he had been in hairdressing for more than 30 years. “That’s where the money is. It’s the hairdressing companies that make the fortunes, not the hairdressers,” he said in Auckland when he was there recently to promote his new product range. His business was always sound, and as he said “the banks loved us,” but his team was always building some new salon or school which kept it in debt