"Swinging London" of the 1960s, with the Beatles and Carnaby Street, produced no revolution more important perhaps than that of Vidal Sassoon. Sassoon created the bob and easy geometric hairstyles that liberated women from weekly visits to the beauty parlor and the stiff, heavy, fixed hairstyles of prior generations. Sassoon's new ideal of beauty was literally care-free and could, for most women, be cut once a month. Its abiding principle was geometry, letting the hair move naturally, and was typified by the 1960s hairstyles of the Beatles themselves. Freeing women from the beauty parlor and nights of sleeping with curlers and other mechanisms on their heads, Sassoon became emblematic of freedom and sensible good health. His salons became the first chain of worldwide hair styling salons and were complemented by his international sales of hair-treatment products. Sassoon, too, became a television talk-show host and celebrity.

Further Reading:

Fishman, Diane and Marcia Powell, Vidal Sassoon: Fifty Years Ahead, New York, Rizzoli, 1993.