Vidal Sassoon and his geometric bob are as key to the 1960s as the mini-skirt, the Mod or Biba...
Who? Vidal Sassoon and his geometric bob are as key to the 1960s as the mini-skirt, the Mod or Biba. The five-point revolutionary cut relieved woman of the high-maintenance roller-set Elnett curls and lacquered beehives of the time, cut with the same experimental shape and precision with which Mary Quant was cutting clothes.
"The haircut embodied the attitude of the decade; a collectivist tool that demonstrated new freedom for women"
What? In a radical decade of rebellion and change, Sassoon stood on the frontline. “Sassoon’s new style liberated women,” cites Michael Gordon, “they felt empowered.” Inspired by Bauhaus architecture, Sassoon first cut the box-bob for Grace Coddington, making a name for them both as integral figures within the period’s youthquake. The haircut embodied the attitude of the decade; a collectivist tool that demonstrated new freedom for women. It provided a haircut suited to the new working female, who did not have time to sit laboriously under a dryer.
Why? Sassoon was part of a sixties set that, with little education or income, changed society and achieved success in an area which, until then, had been denied to them. It was the beginning of the International Sassoon empire, which would become a global realm of salons, training academies and everlasting inspiration built on the foundations of shape, craft and form: “We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry… The cut had to be perfect so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.”
Vidal Sassoon: How One Man Changed the World With a Pair of Scissors is published by Rizzoli and is available now; Vidal Sassoon: Outtakes, an exhibition of photographs from the book, is currently on show at Somerset House until October 28.
Text by Mhairi Graham
