During his heyday in the 1960s he was known as the “Chanel of hair”

World renowned hairstylist, Vidal Sassoon has died at his Los Angeles home aged 84.

Sassoon came to prominence in the 1960s as he pioneered the “wash and wear” look for women’s hair, basically freeing women from over-stylised, labour-intensive styles that dominated the 1950s. He pioneered an “architectural” approach to hairstyling, using geometric cuts and shapes modeled on the facial structure of the person he was styling. At the time, the approach was revolutionary.

He opened his first salon on Bond Street in London in 1954, and his creative styles and cuts, which required little styling and fell into place perfectly every time, fit right in with the then fledgling women’s liberation movement. Before then, the style for women’s hair was high and tight, curled and hairsprayed into place.

“His timing was perfect: As women’s hair was liberated, so were their lives,” Allure magazine Editor-in-Chief Linda Wells told The Associated Press in a written statement. “Sassoon was one of the original feminists.”

One of his best-known clients was Mary Quant, the famous British fashion designer who popularised the mini-skirt in the 1960s.

On the impact his style had on women’s fashion, and women’s liberation, Sassoon later said,

“My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous. Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn’t have time to sit under the dryer anymore.”

“He changed the way everyone looked at hair,” Grace Coddington, creative director of American Vogue

Sassoon moved his salon to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and eventually retired from hairstyling in the 1980s in order to focus on his philanthropic work via his Vidal Sassoon foundation.

Besides his iconic career as a hairstylist, Sassoon also led a tumultuous, and often-publicised private life. He was married four times, most recently in 1992. He was also an avid campaigner against anti-semitism, and opened the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1980s.

He is survived by his fourth wife, and three of four children from his second wife. His oldest child, Catya, died of an overdose in 2002.

Source: BBC News, MSNBC, Examiner, Telegraph]