1928-
Hairstylist

Something Different.

At his mother's suggestion, Vidal Sassoon secured his first job at the age of fourteen in a London beauty salon. After fighting for a year with the Palmach Israeli army, Sassoon returned to London, and in the early 1950s opened his own shop on Bond Street. Resolving that, if he was to be a hairstylist, he should "do something different," Sassoon introduced a new method of blunt-cutting hair and then blow-drying it rather than using rollers, resulting in geometric cuts that were unlike popular styles of the time.

International Fame.

His experiments paid off, and important models and actresses began visiting Sassoon's salon. In the early 1960s the Beatles began to sport Sassoon hairstyles, and the hairdresser was soon internationally famous. Sassoon became the major influence on hairstyles in the 1960s as he introduced both very short and very long styles and...