Vidal Sassoon Quotes

Hairdressers are a wonderful breed. You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye.

Capri on the Amalfi Coast in Italy is my ultimate holiday destination.

If you just do something, then you're a five-year wonder and, goodbye, you're gone. But if people feel it's worthwhile, not only do they copy but they want to learn how to do it To me, that's what it's all about. If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?' It was the teaching of others so that they could take my work and take it further.

My mother had a premonition and she felt that hairdressing would be very very good for me.

From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism.

Beauty is.. The passionate and positive expression of the complete self.

I think that as good architecture enhances a city, a good cut enhances the definition and expression of a face.

When the doubters tell you it can't be done and all kind of tragedies will come your way, I say nonsense. If you can get to the very root of who you are and make something happen from it, my sense tells me you are going to surprise yourself.

To sculpt a head of hair with scissors is an art form. It's in pursuit of art.

If you look good, we look good.

My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous.

If you get hold of a head of hair on somebody you've never seen before, cut beautiful shapes, cut beautiful architectural angles and she walks out looking so different - I think that's masterful.

For me the working of hair is architecture with a human element.

You either create something and you keep it a secret and you die with it, or you can benefit the craft.

Most people have excellent necks. Now they cover them with curtains, which is kind of ridiculous. But there are some beautiful necklines that you can cut into and create wonderful backs, as well as bone structure for the face.

Hair excited me. As the old ways - backcombing, rollers and rigidity - went out of the window, I started to feel the possibilities in front of my eyes.

Take good advice, make sure it is good advice, then do it your way.

You must always do what you feel is right.

We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure. The cut had to be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.

If you have a sense of style and purpose and will you don't want to compromise.

Hair is another name for sex.

I was all about my thoughts, my work, my inspiration. I was always in hair.

To me hair dressing means shape. It's very important that the foundations should be right.

The essence is, what can we do next? And will it be good?

Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn't have time to sit under the dryer.

For nine years I worked to change what was hairdressing then into a geometric art form with color, perm without setting which had never been done before.

I just consider being one of the luckiest people in the sense that creativity came to me and it flowed.

I kept thinking I would be spending my life up to my elbows in shampoo.

It's not recognized by enough people as a worthy craft.

Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special.

If you don't look good, we don't look good.

Everything about morality and obligations I owe to football.

Judaism is important to me from a tribal point of view.

A working woman could save a few shillings a week, and then every five weeks she'd come in and we'd cut her hair. She could shampoo it under the shower, swing it and dry it off or just let it dry by itself. It changed the lives of many young girls who'd never had the opportunity to be styled like that before.

My mother left me for seven years in an orphanage.

As stylists, we're groundshakers and daymakers. I was always in hair.

It's okay saying sorry, but when you are drunk you say what you really feel.

If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?'... it was the teaching of others, so that they could take my work and take it further.

I was a bit of a rebel.

I came home after a year and although my profession was only hairdressing, I knew I could change it.

I don't sort of sit in a chair and pompously feel proud of myself about all the things we might have accomplished.

I was born in 1928 and by 1931 the Depression was beginning to mount.

'The Pianist' is a movie I could watch over and over again.

I'm a great jazz fan.

It's hard to give advice. There are so many people, how do you give major advice to a group of people, it's very presumptuous.

I'll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise - it had been a difficult night the night before - and a client said to me, 'Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?' And I said, 'Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hairpin.'

So I was shampooing at 14. But I've always thought that had I the opportunity for an education, I would have been an architect. There's no question about it.

I got a telegraph from my mother who said that my step-father had had a heart attack, come home and earn a living. So I went back to England and the only thing I knew to earn any cash was through hairdressing.

Hairdressing in general hasn't been given the kudos it deserves. It's not recognised by enough people as a worthy craft.

You never argued with my mother. You couldn't win.