British Jew who changed the world of hairstyles and beauty

In 60 – 70 of the last century in Moscow and Leningrad, I was always amazed in a new way, by fashionably dressed girls and women with unusual hairstyles. It seemed that it was the poetess Veronika Tushnova who wrote about them: “Along Gorky Street, what a walk! The girl is sailing like a sail boat. Hair - what you need! And a sweater - what you need! With a "seditious" tinge of lipstick! .. "In the USSR, then appeared hairstyles, which were called" sessun ". Nobody really knew from whence the name of this hairstyle.
This nostalgic memory of past youth came to me when I recently read a sad news story: 9 May, at the age of 84 years at home in Los Angeles, surrounded by relatives and friends, one of the world's most famous hairdressers and public figures died man of the most amazing fate, the patriot of Israel and the author of the very same hair "sessun" - Vidal Sassoon ...
He was born in 1928 in London, in a poor Sephardic Jewish and Ashkenazic Jewish family ... His father, Nathan Sassoun, came from the Greek city of Thessaloniki, and his mother's parents, Betty Berlin, came from Kiev. After his father left the family, the boy spent six years in a shelter. In the 1939 year, when England, defending Poland, declared war on Hitler Germany, eleven-year-old Vidal could not participate in World War II, but after it ended, he became an active member of the Jewish militant organization and dispersed fascist gatherings in East London as part of the 43 Group.
Young Vidal Sassoon dreamed of being a football player, but on the advice of his mother in 14 years he dropped out of school and entered the courses of hairdressers. After graduation, working in the barber shops of the poorest suburban areas of London. In 1948, he, a twenty-year-old supporter of the creation of a Jewish state, voluntarily decided from London to go to Israel. He first came to Paris, and then to the camp in Marseilles, from where Jews who survived the Nazi concentration camps were shipped to Israel. After five months in the camp, he finally found himself in the Promised Land, where he joined the military Zionist organization Hagan, later transformed into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). There, with a machine gun in his hands, Vidal Sassoon participates in the War of Independence of the world's first Jewish state. Later, he recalled that the service in the Israeli army helped him temper the character necessary for his future career.
The young man was not going to return to London at all, but a telegram came from his mother, reporting the death of her stepfather. After returning to England, Vidal managed to get into the salon, located in the heart of the English capital. There, for the first time, he realized that his new clients, who had not yet forgotten the horrors of the German bombing of World War II, did not need expensive, exquisite hairstyles, and wondered what he could please them.
Half a century later, Vidal Sassoon recalled: “Nobody understood what I was talking about with clients for so long. And we discussed the nature of the hair, the type of person, manner of holding. And how it all fits together with their hairstyle ... "His courteous, delicate and artistic treatment of clients allowed many of these women not only to get rid of the fear syndrome of loneliness that was widespread in that difficult post-war period for Great Britain, but also set it apart from other masters . Prior to Sassoun, barbers were considered simple artisans, and the stars were only in the world of high fashion, he also invents new hairstyles, “geometric” haircuts - “symmetrical”, “asymmetrical”, “bob”, the world-famous “five-pointed”, which became the expression of emancipation and independence of women. The main principle, which adhered to in his work Sassoon, "to help people look and feel better."
The constant clientele of a talented master has steadily increased every year, enabling Vidal to open his first salon in London in 1954. One day, the famous English actress Beverly Adams came in. She liked the salon, haircuts, and their author. Six months later they were married. In 1957, the famous designer Mary Quant, the first in the world to offer mini-skirts, invited Vidal to participate in her famous New York mini-skirt show, which then stopped the traffic in New York and shocked the whole world. Seeing Twiggy, my favorite model of Sassoun, and Mia Ferrow, the beaver (“real squeak of fashion: hair is not shorter”), everyone, from the average man to the American president, understood: there is no more return to the old one.
Mary Quant called Sassoun "Chanel Hairstyles." According to the master, he is equally attentive to both VIPs and ordinary people: “I had a lot of customer stars. But when a girl comes to me - a simple worker who has carved out five shillings for a haircut, I treat her like a princess. ” The women of 1960 have forever been grateful in their hearts to Vidal Sassoon, who freed them from their hated curlers. He invented haircuts, which allow to do without pre-wrapping hair, which gave the woman an elegant look and greatly simplified hair care.
Probably, not every woman in the world knows that it was Vidal Sassoon who invented the hand dryer. Here is how he recalled this: “Once I saw one of my employees handing a client’s hair under a hairdryer-cap… I was painfully thinking how to develop this. So we started using a hand dryer. ” At a time when almost all women wore long hair, and washing and drying was a very urgent problem, this hairdryer gave a sensational chance to dry hair in five to ten minutes. Even this would be enough for the name of the London hairdresser to enter the annals of world history, but for Sassoun it was only a stage of his striving for natural haircuts, hair plastics and what later became known as wash-and-go haircut (“wash your hair and go about his business ”), which did not require complicated styling. This was made possible thanks to a special haircut technique based on a geometrically adjusted approach to the type of face. Each strand with such a haircut falls into place, creating a beautiful elegant shape, the head looks well-groomed, and the woman acquires a modern look. His salon, like a magnet, attracted celebrities from around the world, even those who did not fit the avant-garde style of the master, such as Ingrid Bergman.
Sassoon in 1965 opened his salon in New York, where celebrities of all ages and stripes began to cut their hair only from him. Since then, the term "style of Sassoun" entered the lexicon of fashion houses in Europe and America. Among the clients of the master stylist was film director Roman Polanski. When it became known that he paid Vidal 5 000 dollars for a haircut made by actress Mia Ferrow on the set of the legendary film Rosemary's Baby, Sassoun’s shares soared more than ever. And this haircut after the release of films on the screens has become a cult.
In the 70s, a recognized innovator in the art of hairdressing and the world's first image maker, he moved from the UK to the USA, to Los Angeles, where he founded the headquarters of his “world” hairdressing salon. Despite the fact that for many years Vidal Sassoon's products were blocked in the Arab world due to his open support of Israel, he continues his advertising tour in America and Europe, where he represents Proctor & Gamble, and conducts audits of numerous divisions of his company. In 1984, Sassoon was the official stylist for the Los Angeles World Olympics. However, as he admitted, he personally cut only the closest people. His latest wife Ronnie, who is also the permanent PR director of Vidal Sassoon, turned her husband's successful business into an empire, which included 26 hairdressing salons, the Vidal Sassoon Academy with 13 hairdressing training and professional development centers located around the world.
In 1980's, Vidal Sassoon sells his business, but as his fortune continues to grow and multiply, he engages in charity work, and also continues to replenish his collection of works of art. As a long-term active member of the British anti-fascist organization, he helped Jewish youth, artists, dealt with issues of the spread of Jewish culture. At the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon at his own expense opened and constantly supported the International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. This Center has been bearing his name for many years. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Sassoon allocated funds to rebuild the city. In 2009, by Queen Elizabeth II, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
During his career, Vidal Sassoon published four books, led his own television show in America, where he openly confessed his love for hairdressing and the Jewish people ... An enviable noble life!

Isaac Trabsky