Vidal Sassoon documentary tackles hair stylist’s tough life

• Reprints

Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Vidal Sassoon is having a good hair day — and he wants you to have one, too.

As the humid summer season looms, Vid, as his friends call him, is happy to perform an intervention on your Midwest frizz.

“Oh, frizz. The enemy,” says the 83-year-old hairista. “My best advice is to remember there’s a wonderful look that I found in Harlem. Yes, I’d go there and look at these beautifully shaped heads. The point is you need to embrace your natural curl.

“Get a good cut. One that fits with your bone structure. That way you can air-dry and go very curly on a hot day or blow-dry and straighten. It’s a best of both worlds,” says the master, who was busy signing books at America’s Beauty Show at McCormick Place last weekend.

Of course, he was also there to give a little tress talk. “Remember to get a good cut every month. It keeps the shape,” he insists.

It’s comforting to know he still lives by his own slogan: If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.

His story is on film now, in the documentary “Vidal Sassoon the Movie” (opening Friday at the Music Box), and in an upcoming book that tell the story of Sassoon’s life. He doesn’t snip any of the tough details in a film that was four years in the making.

Born in 1928 in London, he was left in an orphanage from ages 5 to 11. “I believe we grow through our difficulties,” he says. “When you’re young, you don’t realize how hard it is on you. I always loved my mother. She was a great character.

“Later she remarried a terrific man who loved good music and books. He played Beethoven for me every night. So my childhood wasn’t so bad.” His remarried mom took him back, and during World War II, her teenage son worked as a messenger boy and a glove cutter.

“As a bike messenger during World War II, I’d go from the city to the docks in London. Oh, what I saw. People injured so badly from the bombs at night. But I learned a life lesson. People get used to whatever situation is before them.”

His mother forced him to become a hairdresser. “It was the last thing I wanted to be,” he says. “I hadn’t even thought of it.

“But my mom was the most persistent woman I ever met, She literally took me by the elbow and marched me into a salon in East London. I was dragged into hairdressing.”

He studied with famed hairdresser Raymond Bessone in London and then started his own hair revolution.

“Raymond taught me you did everything with one pair of shears. No thinning devices. No razor. In 1954, I said to my very small staff of four, ‘Now we’re going to do hair our way. We’re going to change everything.’

“The end result was quite a few tears … and not from the hairdressers, but from the clients,” he says.

Sassoon created his famed five-point haircut based on his love of architecture.

“Hair is geometry and angles. It’s all about bone structure,” he insists.

He told the clients what cut they would have from him. There were rumors that he would throw his brush and comb if he wasn’t happy with a cut. “I was a naughty boy,” he says. “But I only threw a brush once.”

He famously cut Mia Farrow’s pixie for “Rosemary’s Baby.” In the film, her character is even asked about the chop and she says, “Vidal Sassoon.”

“TV stations filmed me cutting her hair,” says Sassoon, who went on to have salons across the United States and several beauty schools around the world.

What about today’s stars? Sassoon advises ladies who dream of being Jennifer Aniston to get over it.

“It’s a marvelous look on her,” he says. “Victoria Beckham also has a great cut.”

He doesn’t want to see clients clutching magazines full of star photos. “I’d have women bring me pictures of Ava Gardner and I’d say, ‘Darling, you don’t look anything like her, and I think she would be insulted, too.’”

Why should we love our locks? “Hair is one of nature’s biggest compliments,” Sassoon says. “If you have healthy hair that you can swing around naturally it’s a true gift.”

What about guys who shave their heads or go bald?

“My only advice here,” Sassoon says, “is when it’s cold in Chicago, you’d better wear a hat.”

Big Picture News Inc.