‘How one man changed the world with a pair of scissors’ is the byline to this documentary and possibly a tad of an exaggeration, but he certainly made a remarkable and indelible impact on hairdressing … like no one before him, and possible not since.
Vidal Sassoon never wanted to be a hairdresser but his desperately poor single mother apprenticed her son to learn a trade in the East End of London, which was still struggling after the end of World War 2. But he had a natural flair and a remarkable talent and by the 1960’s he had a chair in a West End Salon and soon he opened one of his own in Bond St. He first big break came with an opportunity to do film star Nancy Kwan’s hair, and so he cut it short and gave her a revolutionary architectural shape, the photos of which went around the world and made people really notice him.
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| Cutting Mary Quant’s Hair |
Sassoon was acknowledged as one of the innovative forces that created London’s Swinging Sixties, and as his fame grew so did his business which expanded across the Atlantic, his Hairdressing Academies, a daily TV Show and then eventually to whole range of hair products: the first hairdresser to do so.
When the body of his work is so well documented as it is, you appreciate that he changed the way forever of how women got their haircut. In or out of the Salon he is a lively and fascinating man, although sadly the movie doesn’t really delve into what really makes him tick. In fact the ‘talking heads’ in most of the interviews/testimonials are earnest and flattering, but they are just a little to dry and do not give a sense of passion that embodied Mr. Sassoon’s life. (The conversation with him and Mary Quant is very stilted and excruciating painful).
Hard not to compare this with the recent (and stunning) documentary on another 80+ man: Bill Cunningham, which shared his joie de vivre of a life in progress. In the Vidal movie, someone actually mentions about this being his last few years, giving it a feel of life that has passed, and made this feel like a premature Obituary. Which is a great pity, because the man and his legend deserve better. Still worth a view though.
P.S. I should add that I was actually on Mr. Sassoon’s payroll for two months in 1969. He never bought it up in the movie, so I will say no more.
★★★★★★★
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