continued...
Caroline Cox, a visiting professor at the London College of Fashion and author of two eminently readable tomes on the history of hairdressing, agrees about the "culture of experimentation". But principally, she says, British hairdressing's pre-eminence is the legacy of one man. To understand why, we need a bit of history.
Back in the late 19th century, says Cox, hairdressing had not really changed since the 1600s: it was about dressing hair, and the centre of its world was Paris. Women grew their hair to the waist, and their social status was in part defined by how high and how intricately it was piled on their heads, because they needed a servant - or, by the 1880s, one of the new-fangled hair and beauty salons - to do it. Working-class women were stuck with a simple bun at the nape of the neck.
The advent of modernism changed that. "You couldn't sit on a Bauhaus chair with hair looking like someone who's just stepped out of the court of Versailles," says Cox. Off, then, came all those flowing tresses. But the sudden demand for stylists to cut, rather than merely dress, women's hair posed a problem: when, by the 1920s, every girl in town wanted a bob, the only people actually capable of delivering it were men's barbers. And accustomed as they were to letting their hair down only in the privacy of their own bedrooms, most women didn't want to go near them. The enduring camp tradition in British hairdressing dates from that period, Cox believes: the early male stylists found a fake French accent and an exaggeratedly effeminate manner did wonders to reassure their clients.
Even as late as the 1950s, Britain's first true celebrity hairdresser, Raymond "Mr Teasy-Weasy" Bessone, apparently still felt it necessary to adopt a transparently phoney French voice, sport a scarlet suit, red nail polish, a pencil moustache and an exaggeratedly long cigarette, and deck his Knightsbridge salon with gilt mirrors, chandeliers and champagne fountains despite, says Cox, being "born in Soho and, to put it politely, as heterosexual as they come".
By the dawn of the 60s, however, hairdressing was still essentially perms and waves, Marcels and bouffants, and layers and layers of lacquer - anything, in fact, to disguise the poverty of the cut. Then along came a young man born in 1928 in Shepherd's Bush, the son of a carpet dealer from Thessaloniki and a mother of Russian Jewish descent. After an apprenticeship in Cohen's Beauty and Barber shop in east London and a spell in the Israeli army, Vidal Sassoon became Bessone's assistant before opening his own salon in Bond Street, and changing hairdressing as profoundly as Henry Ford changed carmaking.
"It's impossible to overestimate Sassoon's importance," says Cox. "His impulse was genuinely philosophical and aesthetic, it was a real intellectual step - architecture for the head. Sassoon brought everything back to technique: to cutting, not styling, to form following function. There was no more need for blowdrying or setting or spraying, he produced precision geometric cuts that fitted people's faces. He did the asymmetric bob, Mary Quant's five-point cut, Mia Farrow's urchin look for Rosemary's Baby. He helped make the 60s, for sure, but his influence extends far, far beyond that."
Equally importantly, Sassoon saw that good haircuts demanded properly trained hairdressers. He set up a network of academies that, with their emulators - invariably founded by disciples of the great man - are, in Cox's eyes, the real reason why British hairdressing now rules the world. "This is the Harvard of hair. People come from literally everywhere to train here, from a short course costing a few hundred pounds to a masters course with the international creative director. You have to think of that as like going to an atelier in Paris with John Galliano, except, of course, that there's no such thing."
And it is nothing short of scandalous, Cox reckons, that the profession has the reputation it has: "It's completely unfair that it's the poor cousin of fashion. These people are every bit as creative, every bit as influential as fashion designers. The five-point cut was just as much of a 60s icon as the miniskirt. They're amazing creative minds, and they get none of the acclaim. Guido Palau, for example, is responsible for most of the hair in Alexander McQueen's shows, and not a soul knows it. This is a multibillion-pound business, run by genuinely creative people who are also very hard-nosed businessmen. It deserves better. "
Although, in a roundabout way, Sassoon is why I'm sitting in Covent Garden now, being asked by Angelo Seminara whether I ever have to wear a suit, how often I get my hair cut, if it's always by the same person, and what I'd think if he said he'd like to stick to pretty much the same length, because in fact he thinks it's actually about right. For Seminara came to London to work with Sorbie, and, like pretty much every other top hairdresser at work today, Sorbie is himself a product of the Sassoon school - a former international creative director, in fact, albeit rather a rebellious one.
So what makes a truly great hairdresser, then, Angelo? "You'd look good with longer hair," he says, dodging the question, "Or with a French crop, a Zidane cut. Maybe a bit aggressive, though. Not really you. We'll just do a nice little classic cut. Nothing radical. A bit shorter here, a bit flatter at the back." Discipline and commitment, he answers, at last. "You have to learn, and put in the hours. A little bit of creativity, of course - me, I really love creating what doesn't exist. I like asymetric, odd, spontaneous. I even quite like ugly. And you have to understand who your client is, and be able to work with what's in front of you. Sometimes it's better to have a consultation that lasts an hour, and then to postpone the cut. You have to be prepared to do that."
These days, of course, he spends as much time out of the salon as in. He works with almost all the big fashion designers, McQueen, Yamamoto, Dolce & Gabbana. He gives lucrative demonstrations, comes up with new cuts for the big industry shows. At the leading industry showcase, Salon International in London, top stylists present seasonal collections of entirely new styles; when Sassoon shows, 2,000 hairdressers will pay £150 a head to see it (this is, as Cox puts it, "haute coiffure").
He honestly is never happier than cutting a real live client's hair, though. "The thing is," he says, "in this job you actually can change somebody's life. Like, really transform it." Once, he relates, he cut a guy's hair in Rome. "He came in, really depressed, really sad, horribly dressed, terrible haircut. I thought, maybe I can do something with this. And now, well, he's really quite a successful actor. And a model. He's a happier person, I think."
Was I? I'd certainly never had anyone spend an hour and a half on my hair before. The process was undeniably pleasurable and I have to confess to being rather pleased with the result. You actually can see it has been tremendously skilfully done, I fancy, and plainly with scissors, not just shorn with clippers. And while I'm unlikely, on balance, to return to the British Hairdressing Awards any time soon, I certainly won't be rude about hairdressers again. It's actually a bit George Clooney, this new cut, don't you think? Or even Daniel Craig. Anyway, everyone's noticed it. Really.
This article appeared in The Guardian, January 9, 2008
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