Vidal Sassoon, English-American hairdresser and businessman (b. 1928)
Vidal Sassoon (17 January 1928 – 9 May 2012) was a British hairstylist, businessman, and philanthropist. He was noted for repopularising a simple, close-cut geometric hairstyle called the bob cut, worn by famous fashion designers including Mary Quant and film stars such as Mia Farrow, Goldie Hawn, Cameron Diaz, Nastassja Kinski and Helen Mirren.His early life was one of extreme poverty, with seven years of his childhood spent in an orphanage. He quit school at age 14, soon holding various jobs in London during World War II. Although he hoped to become a professional football player, he became an apprentice hairdresser at the suggestion of his mother.
After developing a reputation for his innovative cuts, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, where he opened the first chain of worldwide hairstyling salons, complemented by a line of hair-treatment products.He sold his business interests in the early 1980s and began funding Israeli think tanks with his profits. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie, a documentary film about his life, was released in 2010. In 2009, Sassoon was appointed CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. In 2012, he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of the last six decades.