Sassoon

Sassoon is a British hairdressing brand founded in 1954, when the stylist Vidal Sassoon opened his first salon at 108 Bond Street in London [12]. Over the following decade Sassoon reshaped how women's hair was cut, trading the elaborate roller sets and lacquered styles of the 1950s for sharp, geometric shapes that fell back into place on their own. The name now covers a global salon and academy network alongside a separately owned line of retail hair-care products.

The brand remains active. Its salons and academies continue to operate across the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany Greece and Spain, and new seasonal collections were released through 2026. Ownership, however, is split across several companies, a legacy of the founder selling his business interests in the early 1980s.

Vidal Sassoon was born in London in 1928 and, according to Wikipedia, spent seven childhood years in a Jewish orphanage before leaving school at 14 to begin a hairdressing apprenticeship. He opened his first salon in 1954; the singer Georgia Brown claimed to be his first customer.

His approach drew directly on Bauhaus architecture. The brand's heritage account summarises the idea as "getting rid of the superfluous and paring it right back to basics," and Sassoon held that a technically precise cut needed no additional products to keep its shape — hair, in his words, should be "material in motion," easy to care for and versatile. Speaking to AnOther Magazine, he described the method plainly: "We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure."

Sassoon's reputation was built on a series of cuts through the 1960s and 1970s. The Five Point cut of 1963 was worn by the designer Mary Quant, the Vogue editor Grace Coddington and the model Peggy Moffitt. In 1965 he opened his first New York salon on Madison Avenue, and in 1967 he created the pixie cut for Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby — a commission the director Roman Polanski reportedly paid $5,000 to arrange, flying Sassoon to Hollywood for the job [12]. Later signature styles included the Wedge cut of 1974, designed by Trevor Sorbie.

In 1973 Sassoon launched his own line of hair-care products, the so-called "brown bottle" range. The business expanded internationally, and in 1984 the brand served as an official consultant to the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The Vidal Sassoon products entered the Chinese market in 1997. The salon and academy side has continued to release roughly two to three collections a year, marking its 60th anniversary in 2014 and its 70th in 2024.

The Sassoon name is now divided among distinct businesses, and sources differ on the exact current arrangement.

The salon and academy network is operated by Regis under licence from Wella. This is stated directly on the company's main site [1] and reflects a chain of ownership changes: Vidal Sassoon sold the rights to his name and image to Richardson-Vicks in 1982, the same company bought Vidal Sassoon Inc. and his Santa Monica hairdressing school in 1983, and Procter & Gamble acquired Richardson-Vicks — and with it the Sassoon brand rights — in 1985 [12]. The professional product line later passed to the Wella portfolio, which Coty sold to the investment firm KKR in 2020 [18]. A sourcing conflict remains on this point: the current sassoon.com site attributes operation to "Regis under licence from Wella Corporate" [1], while the older academy heritage page still reads that "Sassoon Academy is operated by VS salons UK Ltd under license from Coty" [2]. The newer page reflects the post-2020 transfer of the Wella business away from Coty.

The Vidal Sassoon retail hair-care brand followed a separate path and remains largely with Procter & Gamble. In 2024 Henkel agreed to acquire the Vidal Sassoon brand and its hair-care business in Greater China from P&G — a deal trade press valued at roughly $1 billion, covering a business that generated more than €200 million in annual sales [15][13]. Operations outside Greater China stayed with P&G.

Sassoon presents itself as a precision-led professional brand. Its salon copy describes the work as "bespoke hair with a modern touch — discreet, sharp and with the signature of Sassoon," and the company states that it maintains a continuous training system and releases two seasonal collections each year to keep stylists current. The products and services are aimed at professional hairdressers rather than positioned as a mass-market consumer range. The founder's slogan, recorded in his obituary, was "if you don't look good, we don't look good."

Beyond salon services, the brand covers professional tools and a professional product range. On the retail side owned in China by Henkel, named products include a volume-focused line called Genesis and the Red Diamond hair mask, alongside styling products such as setting sprays, hair clay, mousse and curl enhancers [14].

The brand and its founder have drawn sustained editorial and institutional attention. AnOther Magazine described Sassoon's geometric bob as "a defining element of 1960s fashion, comparable in cultural importance to the mini-skirt, the Mod movement, and the Biba brand" [16], and his cuts have been revisited by outlets including Fashionista and L'Officiel USA. Vidal Sassoon was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009. Among the current team, UK Colour Director Edward Darley was named Fellowship Hairdresser of the Year in 2016.

In 2003 Vidal Sassoon sued Procter & Gamble, alleging that the company had neglected the marketing of the brand bearing his name in favour of other hair lines such as Pantene [12]. The parties settled the following year, and by 2004 Sassoon was no longer associated with the brand that carried his name.

Sassoon is active across all its arms. The salon and academy network continues to operate internationally and to publish seasonal collections, with recent releases including Sassoon Youth and Interference in 2026 [8]. The professional product line sits within the Wella portfolio under KKR ownership, while the Vidal Sassoon retail brand remains with Procter & Gamble outside Greater China and with Henkel within it. Vidal Sassoon himself died in Los Angeles in 2012 at the age of 84; Wikipedia records the date as 9 May, while some obituaries give 8 May [12][17].