Vital Sassoon

The man who is arguably the most famous hairdresser in the world is seven months away from his 70th birthday. And he is still a restless man.

Midafternoon, the Vidal Sassoon Academy, Santa Monica: The news is traveling swiftly throughout the school, a buzz that hits the students like an electric current. Hands stop midair clasping brushes full of tint, jaws go slack. Blow-dryers are silenced and scissors cease chopping, leaving an unintended asymmetrical cut.

Mr. Sassoon has arrived.

Not every company’s founding father is treated like divinity. But this is standard procedure when Vidal Sassoon makes one of his occasional walkabouts through the academy. The students are bees surrounding the flower, grasping point-and-shoot cameras and textbooks to be autographed. He blithely obliges every one, chatting amiably.

Sassoon is introduced to a scholarship student, 30-year-old Jeff McClellan, an artist living in Venice who’s always had a yen to do hair.

“This is totally exciting,” McClellan says later. “He’s an icon. I remember him from my childhood, those commercials. He represents a blending of art and science; that’s the thing I love about his work and this school.”

Jenica Tanner, 45, another scholarship student from the Six Nations Indian Reservation in Ontario, Canada, is nearly speechless when brought face to face with Sassoon. “There are so many things I want to say,” she says haltingly. “You don’t know what being here means to me.” He nods, smiling, taking her hands in his.

After nearly an hour of meeting students, he prepares to leave, but takes an administrator aside. “Keep an eye on the artist,” he says. “I’d love to see what he does with color.”

*

10 p.m. the next day, Petersen Automotive Museum: Sassoon is next to last in a long line of speakers at a Jewish National Fund program who recount their experiences fighting during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Although it’s late and the audience is tired, they rally when he begins to speak and remain riveted throughout.

He delves into his childhood in London’s East End, where he was reared by a single mother in the Sephardic ghetto; he recalls fighting fascists in the streets at night and setting hair during the day. He was 20 when his mother, an ardent Zionist, encouraged him to join the underground.

“It was a very, very special learning time for me,” he says. “By the time the war started, we knew what the world thought of us. We had to find our own dignity. [The war] gave us our sense of dignity.

“I was just a private,” he continues, “but I can honestly say it was the year that gave me the most confidence about the future. I came home after a year, and although [my profession] was only hairdressing, I knew I could change it.”

*

4p.m. the next day, Sassoon’s home, Beverly Hills: Standing on his pool deck, Sassoon looks out over a million-dollar view of the city, with the towers of Century City smack in the middle. “It took us two years to find this house,” he explains, the “us” meaning Sassoon and fourth wife Ronnie, 45, a former model and accessories designer from Cincinnati; “this house,” a palace of minimalistic modernism made less frosty with subtle colors and textures and floor-to-ceiling windows. Just off the entryway is a curvaceous velvet sofa and a sleek oblong dining room table. L.A. interior and furniture designer Larry Totah did the house and included some signature custom-made pieces.

Even the Sassoons’ clothes harmonize with the surroundings: He’s in black-and-white checked pants and a slim-fitting black long-sleeved shirt, she’s in black pleated pants and a black tailored blouse.

Sassoon has lived in Los Angeles 23 years, lured west when he was scouting a chemist for his new line of hair care products.

“A lot of people say they couldn’t live in a house like this,” says Ronnie, who looks like a Sassoon model archetype, standing before a wall-sized Ed Ruscha. “But we love it.”

The serenity is shattered in an instant by their two Shih Tzus, Mikie and Moche, who run through the house like frenzied dust mops.

*

Vidal Sassoon will turn 70 in January. It’s a somewhat stunning revelation, considering he has the energy of a man decades younger. Even though his face shows some of the ravages of time and his hair is the color of a winter sky, they are balanced by his lean physique, which he maintains by swimming and Pilates, and those intense eyes.

“Ronnie and I are going to China for two weeks,” he says over lunch at Drai’s cafe, a favorite Beverly Hills spot not far from the Vidal Sassoon salon. The trip precedes the launch of Vidal Sassoon hair products there this fall. He’ll be there for that, too, part of his deal as spokesman for parent company Procter & Gamble. (The Sassoon line hovers around 11th or 12th place among national hair care products, according to Information Resources Inc.)

The man who revolutionized hair hung up his scissors years ago and probably couldn’t be persuaded to trim a bang. Although he is no longer directly involved with his eponymous salons or schools, Sassoon shows no signs of slipping gently into retirement.

Not with a schedule that includes appearances around the world for P & G, involvement in the annual London Fashion Week (a Sassoon creative team does hair for some of the 50 designers who show; Sassoon himself talks to the press), his research foundation at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, plus familial obligations with his wife and four grown children (from a previous marriage). Plus he’s searching for new ventures--perhaps a fashion week for his adopted hometown, L.A.

There’s room for a social life, too, although the couple have cut back on their rounds in the L.A. charity scene--there’s only so much time. Among their friends are Zubin Mehta and architect Frank Gehry.

Sassoon’s soft-spoken manner belies his reluctance to slow down. His is a quiet intensity, broken up with an occasional eruption of laughter over a particularly good story.

He seems to harbor no regrets for turning over the reins of his salons and academies and selling his interest years ago to his longtime business associates or selling the hair care line to a conglomerate. Sassoon’s neatly manicured hands aren’t totally out of the businesses--”I keep very close tabs” on the new salons and schools, he says between bites of crab cakes. “They want me to go to the openings and talk to the press, and I haven’t stopped doing those kinds of things.”

But what about having a say in the overall shaping of today’s Sassoon look?

“Oh, no,” he says. “If you want to be a Horowitz, you’d better practice piano eight hours a day. If you want to design hair, you’d better be cutting on the salon floor eight hours a day. With any art form, your hands have to be in it. And they don’t need me anymore.”

Sassoon knows the business is in good hands with associates like Annie Humphreys and Tim Hartley, who have been with him nearly 40 years. Besides, he has other things on his mind these days: politics, global economic and cultural issues, combating xenophobia and anti-Semitism, and trying to convince someone that Disney Hall should be moved to Santa Monica so it juts out into the water, a la the Sydney Opera House.

Well, OK, the last one’s not a burning issue.

But xenophobia and anti-Semitism are, and have been since his boyhood days. “I think because of my upbringing and my experiences in Israel that within me there’s always that lurking feeling of anti-Semitism,” he explains. “So 14, 15 years ago, Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University, and I started this foundation. We’ve had seminars in Berlin, in South America, many different countries. Sixty percent of the people who come to these conferences are Gentile. There is almost a metamorphosis of thought, an awareness that thinking has to change where xenophobia is involved, because it’s so dangerous.”

The Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Related Bigotries at Hebrew University is an international research facility with 15 staff members and more than 100 affiliated researchers worldwide. Sassoon is a major supporter and travels to Israel every year.

Though it seems a stretch, Sassoon even sees hairdressing playing an integral part in fostering a global brother- and sisterhood.

“You can walk into an academy and there will be 12 languages spoken. We’ve got kids from Africa, from mainland China. And naturally, they have an affinity for other human beings--most hairdressers do. After three months, you’ll find that a kid from Eastern Europe and a kid from India are getting to know one another. After six months, they’re the firmest friends. And at the end of the year, they’re in love. They’ll go back to their countries with another sense of our world.”

*

There was no such feeling of “oneness” when Sassoon was a child growing up in London’s East End. He recalls his childhood with neither a rosy-colored aura nor bitter recollections of a life of poverty.

Yes, he was poor and fatherless (his father abandoned the family when Sassoon was a boy). His mother became unable to care for Vidal and younger brother Ivor and sent them to an orphanage for several years. Yet it was no Dickensian nightmare, Sassoon recalls. “It was the Depression, hundreds of thousands of people were in the same boat. When people tell me what a terrible childhood I had, I say I had a wonderful childhood! I was kicking a soccer ball around.”

But he didn’t get an education and instead was sent by his mother to apprentice to a hairdresser at 14. Then came his stint in the war, which ended when he was summoned back home. He was now needed in the work force.

In 1954, he opened a salon on Bond Street and subsequently revolutionized the way women wore their hair. Instead of teasing, rolling and setting it into stiff, sticky bouffants and flips, he took a more natural approach. Influenced by architecture, especially the Bauhaus, the cut became the thing: angular, geometric, precise styles that complemented a woman’s face and allowed hair to move freely.

Sassoon’s untraditional ideas fit in perfectly with London’s white-hot fashion scene, and he became an integral part of ‘60s pop culture that included in the mix designers like Mary Quant and bands like the Beatles.

He methodically expanded his business, adding more salons in England, then the United States, boldly building an empire as none had done before. Voice lessons rid him of his telltale cockney accent. Being an admitted workaholic brought him success and disappointment. His high profile elevated him from behind-the-scenes hairdresser to superstar, while at the same time effectively ending his first marriage to his receptionist.

Yet the definitive looks he created appeared in all the top fashion magazines, and Sassoon was comfortable in the spotlight that seemed to always follow him.

He also opened schools to teach the Sassoon method. (Santa Monica is due to open a brand-new home for its academy later this month just off the Third Street Promenade.) Scholarships for novices and professionals have been available for years, but three years ago it was formalized as the Success in Hair Scholarship Program, funded by the Vidal Sassoon Foundation, the salons and academies, and Procter & Gamble. (Tuition for a basic cosmetology course is $1,275.)

In 1982, Sassoon sold the hair care division for an undisclosed sum to Richardson-Vicks, which was bought soon after by Procter & Gamble. At the time, he says, he was the major stockholder but didn’t hold the majority of shares. Stockholders had dollar signs in their eyes anticipating profits from the sale.

“I think we could have struggled through and turned it into a mega-business,” he says. “I couldn’t really persuade them to hang on. That’s OK,” he adds with a shrug. “Actually, I did extremely well.”

Wanting to keep the salons and academies in the hands of his associates--most of whom had been with him since the 1950s--he turned that part of the business over to them at the same time.

Humphreys is one of those associates, and she doesn’t believe her former boss harbors any regrets. Says the international director of color and technical research for the salons, who hooked up with Sassoon in 1958: “He’s still very interested in hair, and also the arts and architecture and what’s going on around him. He’s always been interested in young people, helping them develop.”

Robert Edele and Sassoon have known each other since boyhood, when they were both apprentices who hung out in dance halls. Edele has worked for Sassoon most of his career and says of their relationship: “We’re sort of close and not close. His fame took him into one level, and mine didn’t. I sort of hung out with a different crowd. He likes a lot of the attention he gets--that’s not a put-down.

“Part of my job was to help promote him. I love the man, actually. I love watching him speak. Everything he has done, apart from hairdressing, he has made himself, from his speech to his intellect. Being brought up in the orphanage gave him his determination. I used to meet him on the way to the salon, and he’d be worried about a problem, but when we’d get about 50 yards from the salon he’d say, ‘OK, that’s it,’ and nothing would bother him all day.”

Sassoon is admiring of some of the new, hot players on the scene, like New York-based Frederic Fekkai.

Fekkai, due to open his own Beverly Hills salon soon, returns the compliment. “I think that Vidal is in his own league. . . . The way he structured his business and developed his teams has always been influential to me. Even though he we have different styles, he has influenced me in the way of looking at a haircut. It’s helped me to develop my technique.”

*

Two weeks after his visit to the Santa Monica academy, Sassoon is having a late breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, where every waiter greets him with, “Hello, Mr. Sassoon.”

The trip to China went well, highlighted by a picnic on the Great Wall. Sassoon enjoyed the trip, but the long flights (he hates being cooped up for long) and jet lag have clearly taken a toll. He’s considering not renewing his contract with P & G next year.

“When we were bought, I initially gave them five years,” he explains, “and every two years they said, we need you to open this market, we need you to do that. And I don’t think you can sell [a company] and run.”

And if he opted not to sign?

“I’ve never had a sabbatical. I’ve never had more than a month off in my life. And I just wouldn’t mind thinking for six months, just writing a few things down and playing, visiting and doing nothing that I don’t want to do, not be at anybody’s beck and call. I’ve always romanticized going to a town like Berkeley and going to school for the first time in my life. That would be wonderful.”

Lack of an education is possibly Sassoon’s only regret. “It would have been all different,” he says. “I could have read at Cambridge or Oxford--that would have been extraordinary. I would have probably been an architect.”

Cutting back would also give him more time with his family. With second wife Beverly he had four children: Catya, 29, who lives in South Africa; Elan, 27, an L.A. film producer; David, 24, a student at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire studying international business; and Eden, 24, an aspiring actress who lives in L.A.

Of the decision to adopt David, he recalls: “At the time, we had two girls and one boy, and I said, ‘I think Elan needs a brother.’ And his mum wasn’t truly interested in having another child, and I said, ‘Let’s adopt a kid.’ We saw a few, and they said, ‘How about a kid of color?’ and we said, ‘Hey, why not?’ He was a beautiful child. The first thing he ever said was, ‘Are you going to be my new mum and dad?’ ”

Sassoon would love to see David go into politics. About Catya, however, he is concerned. She’s been through rehab and is apparently clean; Sassoon’s concern for her shows on his face, which wears a slight frown. He speaks slowly, his eyes fixed on some indeterminate point.

“God bless her, you know, she’s the one that’s had the difficulties. It’s very sad. . . . In this neighborhood, right here, some of the kids were taking dope, and she couldn’t get out of it. She’s had a very troubled existence. It still is hard. Some say I gave her too much freedom. But that’s a very interesting thing, freedom. Nobody controlled me when I was a kid. I allowed [the children] freedom to think for themselves, and it worked three out of four times. I probably should have been a wee bit more forceful with her, but who knows?” His frown disappears at the thought that he’s to call her in half an hour.

The conversation turns to another bright point: Sassoon is toying with the idea of starting an L.A. fashion week, modeled after London’s.

“It’s the natural second city to have a fashion week,” he says, getting excited by the prospect. “What I would love to do is bring in a couple of Italian designers, French, British, Japanese--like Jil Sander, Karl Lagerfeld, Issey Miyake--bring them all in, and that’s the core. Now we bring in the California designers, bring the kids. You’ll find all these young designers working in attics and basements and wherever, and given this opportunity, you don’t know what kind of talent you might unfold. I’ve already put the idea to Procter. It would have to be very costly up front until it became self-supporting.

“That’s what cities are about--creating excitement in people’s lives. Otherwise, go live in the country. [Fashion] creates so much excitement because everyone can join in. You can buy copies of the real thing, you can be involved. The social phenomenon of fashion is what it brings out in our world. It’s not just these crazy designers. They’re saying something that’s shaping our world today.”

Sassoon credits Ronnie with pointing out L.A.’s street fashions. “It’s much freer here than in New York or even San Francisco,” he says. “You see these kids who are really putting themselves together. There are some great looks.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Vidal Sassoon

Age: 69.

Native?: No, born in England, has lived in Los Angeles for 23 years.

Family: Married to fourth wife, Ronnie; four children from a previous marriage.

Passions: Architecture, reading, theater and fighting anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

On growing up in prewar England: “Things were so political, there were strong fascist parties in France and England, so there were street fights. Politics was second nature to us. We smelled it all the time. We knew we had to be careful if we walked down certain streets. It was very much a part of growing up.”

On his recognition around the world: “In Japan we’re mobbed. I appear in commercials there, and it’s our strongest country. But there’s a mixed reaction to me in other countries. Some, they know me very well, and in others I could be Tom Smith--whoever Tom Smith is.”

On wife Ronnie and family: “I couldn’t have a better ally. The hairdressers adore her. I admire her style; I like people with style. But I don’t necessarily mean with clothes. She has a great heart. She has done so much helping my youngest daughter develop her mind and her attitudes. For that alone I just adore her. The kids are thinkers, they’ve really blossomed. Having dinner with the family is not nonsense--somebody says something.”