Who Was Vidal Sassoon?

It is said that Vidal Sassoon changed the world with a pair of scissors. After a rough childhood, Vidal Sassoon went on to become one of the biggest influences on style and fashion that the world has ever seen. He pioneered new hair cutting techniques and styles that had never been imagined before. 

Vidal Sassoon's most famous commercial said "If you don't look good, we don't look good." In this episode, Alex and Kelly unpack the stories and influence of one of the original influencers the world has ever known. 

Transcript

Alex: 0:08

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of dirt nap city. What is this? Is the show about interesting, dead people, and if you're, if you're if you're flipping the channels and

Kelly: 0:25

and you happened upon us, yeah, then

Alex: 0:29

you're in the right place if you're looking for interesting dead

Kelly: 0:33

people stories. But it's not about death.

Alex: 0:36

Sometimes it is, sometimes it is.

Kelly: 0:40

I guess the flying wallendas were a little bit about death.

Alex: 0:43

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I have some future ones that are a little bit more about death. But no, that's it's not a macabre, morbid type of haunted house vibe. We're not, we're not a Halloween specialty. No,

Kelly: 0:59

no, we're, we're a comedy podcast about history. We try

Alex: 1:03

to feature their life. Of these interesting people celebrate sometimes it's their death that's interesting. More often than not, it's their life that's been interesting, agreed. So I got a good one for you today. Okay, really in my lane, completely century, completely in my 20th century. White Guy, completely in my lane. But I would say that it's, it's gonna be a little you and I will be out of our depths talking about this person like, this is not in our area of our circle of interest.

Kelly: 1:46

So it's not sports, and it's not because you're sports. It's not like movies or music because I'm both of those. But it is very much pop culture. Okay? Pop culture from this 20th century, 20th Century,

Alex: 1:59

white guy born in 1928 in London, died in 2012 in Los Angeles. How

Kelly: 2:10

did I know it was going to be LA? I knew. I knew it was going to be either New York or LA. Yeah. Good ones go. Yeah. So okay, 2012 he died and 1928 in London. So British guy, yeah,

Alex: 2:24

but you might not have even known he is British. You might not have ever, ever heard him talk. And here's the power. I'm going to demonstrate something now. I'm only going to say one line, and in doing so, I'm gonna demonstrate one of three things. Either I'm gonna demonstrate the power of advertising in the 1970s I'm gonna either demonstrate that you didn't watch TV in the 1970s Okay, that's not true, but or I'm gonna demonstrate that you have a poor memory. That's probably true. When I give this one line, I have a feeling you're gonna get it. Even though you've never heard this person talk, you probably don't even know what he looks like, and you aren't in his target market at all. Okay, ready for the line. Let's hear the line. If you don't look good, we don't look good.

Kelly: 3:20

Vil Sassoon, isn't that crazy

Alex: 3:22

dude, yeah, one line, you can't picture him, right? You've never heard him talk. I bet he's handsome. You're not, yeah, yeah, good looking guy. You're not in at all in his uh, demographic, yeah? But Mr. Vidal Sassoon changed the world with a pair of scissors.

Kelly: 3:41

Wow. So, so, first of all, I would have thought he was with a name like that. I would have thought he was Italian or or Spanish or something, Vida Sassoon.

Alex: 3:51

The name is actually Greek. I think Greek. His his parents or his dad was Greek, but grew up in London, grew up as a his dad was a Greek immigrant,

Kelly: 4:05

and was that his real name? Oh, yeah, yeah, Dallas. That's okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you don't look good, we don't look good.

Alex: 4:12

Before we get to that though, tell us, Kelly, a lot of people listening don't even know what you look like, but tell us what your haircut history is. My

Kelly: 4:24

haircut history? Well, I started off, you know, like many children do, with sparse hair, and then I grew into a very blonde child with kind of longish hair, and then I had a period of mullet time during high school and college where I kind of had the business in the front party in the back, a little bit of curls, curl. Yeah, I remember a bunch is curls, kind of curly hair. And then in my probably 30s, as I started to lose my hair, I had this fascination with Dolph Lundgren. Remember his haircut in Rocky four where

Alex: 4:58

it was just short and. Spiky, flat top,

Kelly: 5:01

spiky I wanted. I wanted that hair. I always thought that was the coolest haircut ever, and I could never accomplish it because of the curliness. So I finally just gave up, and now just have to go really, really short, I suppose to get well, I do. I mean, my hair is my hair is a number one. My haircut today is a number one. But that's more to fight baldness. Here's the weird thing about haircuts, Alex, especially in older men. And you know, I say older 50 something men, as you start to lose your hair, when you grow your hair out, you look more bald than when you shave it or cut it. I don't know why, but when my hair gets long, what's not there is painfully obvious. But what is there is, is, is longer, but then when I cut it super short, it I look like just kind of a tech bro, I guess. Did

Alex: 5:51

you ever dye your hair to achieve the

Kelly: 5:55

several times? Yes, really, dude, I did it. I dyed your hair really. I've done it. I I thought you knew this. And this is if my wife is probably listening to this right now, and she's probably laying next to me in bed, because she goes to sleep listening to dirt nap city sometimes. So Jody, if you're, if you're listening to this, roll over and pat me on the back. She's

Alex: 6:18

never heard the end of this show, has she? She's, she's never No,

Kelly: 6:21

no. It puts her right out. But it works, and she enjoys the first five minutes, sure. But I dyed my hair right before I got married, and so my hair was bleach blonde for not only, I don't know, my bachelor party, which was a snowboarding trip, but also my wedding, my hair all my wedding pictures, I was bleach blonde.

Alex: 6:45

And what were you trying to achieve? The Dolph Lundgren thing, that was what you were trying to,

Kelly: 6:49

um, I'm not sure, you know, I think I was pretty young, and I thought it would look good and, and a lot of my family and Jody's family were starting to second guess whether, you know, I was married in material or not after I did that, because you

Alex: 7:04

figured the bleach blonde was the that sell them. No, no,

Kelly: 7:08

no. Quite the opposite. They were like, why did he dye his hair right before the wedding? Because it's like all my wedding pictures, my hair is, is bleach blonde. It worked for Ryan

Alex: 7:17

Seacrest, you know? Why not? Wouldn't? Why wouldn't work for you,

Kelly: 7:22

man, because I don't look good and you don't look good. Nobody looks good when they're around me. I don't know. Man, it was, I thought it looked I thought it looked pretty cool, but, but honestly, in hindsight, I could see where it was, maybe a red flag for some of my wife's family.

Alex: 7:37

Wow. So what we've just established, though, is the importance of haircuts on somebody's reputation, somebody's looks. Yeah, just the whole and I think what you'll what I'll demonstrate about Mr. Sassoon is that he changed the whole culture. On on on haircuts. Let me tell you a little bit about this guy, please. So he was born in London in 1928 to Jewish parents. His father was a Greek Jew. His mother was an English Jew, and she emigrated from Russia, and he lived in like a Greek Jewish section of London. The father left the whole family for another woman when Vidal was three, and they were they had money then, but then, when he left, they basically were out on the street. They became homeless, taken in by by one of his mother's sisters. And so there was seven people in a one room house and no toilet. This is like pre war England, very Dickensian, probably right, yeah, yeah. He had to, they had to share a toilet with three other families of like seven people each. You know, that's rough.

Kelly: 8:52

Are we talking outhouse or indoor plumbing or do, you know,

Alex: 8:55

I think it was like apartment, but there was like a bathroom at the end of the hall.

Kelly: 9:01

Oh, so, like, all three families went down, so you had to get in line, like, like a door lane, like a dorm. I never lived in the dorm.

Alex: 9:10

Yeah, we've already established that you're from the elite, right, right? And they're roof leaked, something that you're never going to experience. But they're, they're hopefully not going forward, no. And he said, when he was remembering this, he said, you know, all we could see from our window was the grayness of the tenement across the street. There was ugliness all around. You can kind of picture that pre war, yeah, England, it's just gray, and everything's in black and white, yeah, right. A lot of a lot of bands, a lot of British bands, talk about growing up in that kind of ugliness, monochromatic part of England that just, there was no, no hope, just ugliness all around, right, yeah. And they were so destitute that eventually his mom had to put him in a. Orphanage. And I guess that's something that people did back then, when they when they just were too poor to to have, you know, and they'd have a lot of kids, they would just, there was a lot of orphanages around, yeah, so for seven years from time he was four until he was 11, um, he lived in an orphanage. So he wasn't

Kelly: 10:19

actually technically an orphan, because his parents were still alive. His mom was still sort of taking care of him, but he was shuffled off. Did she call it like summer camp or sleepover?

Alex: 10:30

She used to visit him once a month, but she wasn't allowed to take him out of the building, so it was almost like he was in jail, you know, like Kid jail until she finally remarried, and then then they got him back, once they got money that he went to a Christian school. But of course, he was teased for being Jewish, so that definitely had an impact on him, and even his teachers didn't really like him very much. He was he said he was a bad student, except for there was a class they had called mental arithmetic. This is something that we didn't have in school. I think it's so idea for a class is this

Kelly: 11:15

where you just do things in your head. You don't write it out long form. Yes, they would

Alex: 11:19

ask you questions and you would do it in your head. No, so he was good at a mental arithmetic, and his teacher told him, Sassoon, it's a pleasure to see that you have gaps of intelligence between bouts of ignorance.

Kelly: 11:33

Wow, that is a I guess that teacher didn't write a recommendation.

Alex: 11:38

So his, you know, kids at school, and they teased him. His teacher didn't like him. You know, it was rough, rough growing up, and then, as if things couldn't get worse, in 1939 when he was 11, World War Two broke out

Kelly: 11:56

in Europe. Did he become an ambulance driver? No,

Alex: 12:00

but he was his school was evacuated by or he was evacuated. All the Jewish kids in the neighborhood were evacuated by train to a different part of England or different part of London. Maybe he came back to London three years later when he was 14, but it was still during the war. It was rough times in in London at the time, think about how uncertain everything was. They didn't know they were going to win the war. I mean, no, and London was constantly getting, you know, bombed, and it was awful. His mom wanted him to be a hairdresser, that's where, and I don't know why she thought that that was a good route for him, but he wanted to play soccer, but she insisted on taking him to hairdressing school.

Kelly: 12:51

Did he get teased about that at that point? Who cares? Right, right, right, you're already teased about everything else. Just Just go with it. Well, it was a two year

Alex: 12:59

program, and it was a little more expensive than they thought it was going to be. So they left. But then as they're walking out the door, the head of the school said, Come back here. He says, You You have very good manners. Start Monday and forget the cost. It's on me. Oh, and so he went to hairdressing school, and really liked it. And you know what he did that was kind of cool, is that to practice his his skills, he would go down to Skid Row. That's the real Skid Row in London, and what once a week, and he would give free haircuts to the homeless people in in London, on skid row to practice. They're getting a haircut. He's learning it sounds like a win, win, yeah. Well, when he was 20 years old, he he actually went on a kibbutz and fought in the Arab Israeli war. I mean, that was the war that established the State of Israel. He said that was the best year of his life. He said, here we have, you know, 2000 years of our people being put down, and we have a nation that's rising up. So he loved that experience, and it was really formative for him. He kind of felt a sense of purpose. But then came back to England and trained as a hairdresser under a guy named Raymond Basson. Now we wouldn't know this, because we didn't grow up back then, but in the 1950s uh, Raymond Basson was a famous hairdresser, probably the first famous hairdresser.

Kelly: 14:40

Can you name a famous hairdresser from the 2000 20s?

Alex: 14:47

No, okay, but this guy, his name was Raymond bassoon, but people know him as Mr. Tweezy. I.

Kelly: 15:00

Yeah, wow, yeah, Mr. Tweezy.

Alex: 15:02

Or some people called him tz Weezy Raymond, but he was this guy, and he would have this fake French accent. And was he English or American? He was English, but he had fake French. Everyone thought he was French because he'd walk around with this fake French accent. And he was the person that actually developed the bouffant hair, hair,

Kelly: 15:21

hair, stuff. Teasy, Wheezy, because he teased the hair. Did you

Alex: 15:25

just get that? Yeah, you thought it because he teased videl so soon, yeah?

Kelly: 15:28

I thought maybe you know he everybody else is making fun of him,

Alex: 15:32

no, because he teased the hair. Yeah? Okay, so the bouffant, if you can picture the Bucha, yeah, hairstyle that was very big in the 1950s Right, right. Um, think Alice from The Brady Bunch, right? Yeah,

Kelly: 15:46

yeah, she had the bouffant. I think, I think Mrs. Brady did too,

Alex: 15:49

sure, the B 50 twos little fair, yeah, yeah, they rocked that for years. But that was kind of in camp. Yeah,

Kelly: 15:58

they were, they were doing it to be ironic or retro or whatever, but, right? Yeah,

Alex: 16:03

but this was a real thing, and that's how most women wore their hair. Before that, it was, you know, going to the beauty parlor and wearing curls like your great grandparents would have. And you know about that, women would have to go once a week. They'd go to the beauty parlor dryers that went over their head, and you wouldn't wash your hair the rest of the week. And you go to the beauty parlor, like every Friday or something, and they would wash your hair and set it and you didn't mess with it the rest of the week, right? You'd take a shower with a shower cap. You'd sleep with the head covering on, and you would just have this style that was just set like a hat.

Kelly: 16:45

That's my style, like a hat. Well,

Alex: 16:47

then when, when teasy Weezy came along, that kind of gave a little glam to the to the hairstyle. But still, I think it was still, you know, a once a week Production and kind of a set kind of thing. Okay? Well, our boy opened his salon in 1954 and he His thing was, he wanted to get to the basics of like the angles of the head and the cut and the shape, and really do some artistic things, but also something that was more modern and low maintenance. So he would His thing was like geometric shapes

Kelly: 17:28

hair, or men's hair, but women's, women's hair, okay, okay, so that was a lot of work, and he wanted something a little low maintenance, but still looked good.

Alex: 17:37

I think in the 1950s there was no men's cuts. Every guy had the high, tight, yeah, you know, I don't think, I mean, this was before, unless you were a hippie. But in the 50s, in 1954 I don't think anybody was rocking long hair. Any men were rocking long hair, because the Beatles came around, like 10 years later with the long hair. But I think in the 50s, there was no like, variety of men's hairstyles. You were either high and tight or bald. Hmm, okay, and everyone wore hats, so it didn't

Kelly: 18:10

matter. Yeah, it sounds like me. Man, maybe I was born too late. But think

Alex: 18:14

about it, men, until JFK came along and they, they say that he was the first guy to like, not he didn't wear a hat, and that kind of started the trend and made it okay to not wear a hat. But if you look at like people, like pictures of baseball games in the stands in the 50s, like every man wore a hat back then. So yeah, I guess hairstyle really didn't matter to men. Well, he was not only interested in, like, the geometric shapes of hair, but he was also interested in, um, not putting a lot of product in here, that the hair has a natural shine, right? And so the hair that they called it lacquer, that people women would put in their hair to, like, give it this artificial shine

Kelly: 19:02

and and also, probably, to keep it rigid, right, to keep it in

Alex: 19:05

Yeah, probably, but it would just like, kind of look porcelain, you know, um, so he came up with the idea of, like, what he called wash and wear hair, yeah, that a woman could shake her head and it would fall back in place, yeah, you Know,

Kelly: 19:20

whether it was yes or no, however, she shook her head.

Alex: 19:23

However, whatever I'm talking about is how pretty much everybody wears their hair now, right? But nobody wore their hair back then, like he was changed the world with a pair of scissors. The other thing about wash and wear is that you only needed to get it cut every six weeks, not every week, right? So this was a big deal that, you know, women were starting, you know, this is post war now, starting back, starting workforce, starting to go in the workplace for the first time. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. So the hair style, the modern hairstyle. Kind of mirrored what was going on and made it easier for their their kind of new lives. The big thing that he came up with was called the Five point haircut. Anybody that's in haircut cutting business will tell you they know what the five point cut is, and it was, so it's like an asymmetrical think about a bowl cut, and then, like, it's shifted a little where one ends a little longer, and then the five points is like one point in the front, two on each one on each side, and then two at the nape of the neck, kind of making, like a inverted U shape. And then, okay, the neck, okay. He also created the bob cut. So these are, yeah, so these are, all of a sudden women are getting short haircuts. You know that they only have to get recut every six weeks. Absolute revolution changed everything, and it was his invention. He opened his first US salon in 1965 on Madison Avenue in New York, and within five years, he had one in Toronto, one in Beverly Hills, and he also had his own hairdressing school in London. Were

Kelly: 21:17

they? Were they called Vidal Sassoon? Yeah, the salons, okay, yeah.

Alex: 21:21

But his big break came in in like 1968 the movie Rosemary's Baby. Have you ever seen that movie?

Kelly: 21:32

No, but was it Sharon Tate, no. Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow, okay,

Alex: 21:38

and if you could picture Mia Farrow, she had this real short haircut, like real tight pixie is what we'd call it, pixie cut, right? He was paid by the director of the movie. He was paid $5,000 which should be like $45,000 today, to create a unique haircut for her for that movie. And he created Wow pixie cut. Wanted something that that worked for him, so he moved. He moved to LA in 1970 he saw that this is, you know, this was very lucrative. Everyone in Beverly Hills wanted him a stylist

Kelly: 22:20

or absolutely personal hairdresser. And

Alex: 22:25

then in 1973 somebody told him, you know, actually, I think Michael King, the actor, takes credit for for this because he was his roommate. For some reason, that's random. Yeah, you see, it's whenever you read about celebrities from right?

Kelly: 22:41

They always encountered each other somewhere, yeah, and

Alex: 22:46

it's always these, these throwaway stories where somebody so Michael Caine claims that he told him, you know, what you really got to do is start a hair care product line. Yeah, you gotta start selling shampoos and conditioners. And that was something, I mean, think about it. We went from once a week going to the beauty parlor, where somebody else would take care of you. Now you got to take care of your own hair. You got to wash it, you know, every other day, washing wear. And that's part of it, right? And so you got to, you got to put product. You got to use shampoos and conditioners. Well, he was, you know, right place, right time, Michael Caine told him to do it, so that's where it really took off, right? You could probably picture the videl Sassoon bottles of shampoo, yeah. You could picture his logo, right? They black and white, I think, yeah. And I think he had a logo with, like, uh, kind of a double Yeah, yeah. Um, he was so famous that in 1980 they even gave him his own talk show. For, didn't, didn't last very long, but it's called your new day when he would interview people like for,

Kelly: 23:54

he'd probably have a podcast today. Absolutely, yeah, jerks,

Alex: 23:58

always have a podcast. Um, by 1982 Vidal Sassoon was raking in about $110 million in sales a year. Wow, mostly in, mostly in the US too. And he got so rich that he was able to go back to Jerusalem and establish the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of anti semitism, which still exists to this day, and does really cool work in Sociology and anthropology and criminology and just studying anti semitism. It funds a lot of great research on on hate and the rise of of hate crimes and things like that. So it's really a, like a vital

Kelly: 24:56

or a or a Vidal. Oh, good, good. I

Alex: 24:59

see what you did there. Yeah. Yeah, it's really a cool thing that that exists. Still,

Kelly: 25:02

this mission is very vider, that we accomplish this. And you know,

Alex: 25:07

you say you haven't heard him talk, and maybe you have, and he was in some of his commercials, but he didn't really have a British accent. I think originally, he had, like, a Cockney accent.

Kelly: 25:17

So he tried to get rid of that. He did

Alex: 25:19

get rid of it and wasn't popped up, ended up being more like what we'd call like continental or mid Continental, where you can't really tell where somebody's from. They just sound like they're rich. You know what? I mean?

Kelly: 25:31

Yeah, like you and me. Yeah, sure.

Alex: 25:35

Well, he sold the product line to Proctor and Gamble in 1984 but you know, he was actually, remember, on a previous episode, you talked about the Order of the British Empire and how you could be knighted. Yeah, somebody calls you sir, right? He got the commander he was. He was deemed a Commander of the Order of British Empire. CBE, not a OBE, so he wasn't, you can't call him sir. It's just the one right below

Kelly: 26:08

that. Okay, yeah, he's the guy that cuts the SIRs haircut. Hairs, yeah. Paul McCartney, right, John, right, right, right. He cuts all the Knights hairs.

Alex: 26:17

Um, 2009 I think even Michael Caine might have that. They might have leapfrogged him and got the order. I think he might be sir. Michael Caine, if I'm not mistaken. Wow,

Kelly: 26:27

okay, yeah, talk about, I mean, who'd have known all those years ago when those guys were up late playing video games and drinking beer, you know? And then there

Alex: 26:37

was a lot of drinking beer, yeah, 2009 is when he got the CBE. You know, he wrote his, he wrote an autobiography, 1968 so he hadn't even really made it

Kelly: 26:51

huge, as he wasn't at the top of his, at the top of his fame. And I mean

Alex: 26:56

the commercials, if you don't look good, we don't look good. That was 1976 Okay, so 1968 he was famous enough to write his own autobiography. And I love the title of this book. It was called, sorry, I kept you waiting, madam.

Kelly: 27:13

Yeah, I guess he had to say that a lot. That was probably in his vocabulary.

Alex: 27:17

Think about it, yeah, you're waiting. You have a four o'clock appointment, right? He rolls out at 420 and what does he say, Dude, it's 420 All right, 415

Kelly: 27:30

he says, The shortest word in the English language. You know what? That is, set here.

Alex: 27:38

Let's say he comes out at 415 okay. And he says, Sorry, I kept you waiting, madam, yeah,

Kelly: 27:44

yeah, in his in his posh, can't identify where it's from, accent, right? I really want to hear his voice now see what it was like.

Alex: 27:53

Yeah, it was very smooth, like you said. He was a good looking dude, very tan, yeah, already had, like, you know, olive skin, right? Yeah. So very, very tan. Had nice, beautiful gray hair as he as he got older, yeah, yeah. They made a documentary about him in 2010 and it was called the del Sassoon, the movie how one man changed the world where the Paris scissors, Oh, that wasn't, that wasn't me saying, yeah,

Kelly: 28:25

it was that's, that's great, though it's a great title. But, you

Alex: 28:29

know, the legacy that this guy left was blending, like men's haircuts now, yeah, blending edges, layers to the hair, like all that, shaping and geometry and all that stuff, and not when you think about it. When you look at movies from the 40s and 50s, all the men kind of have the same look, and all the women that kind of have the same look. Not only was it liberating for them Nick but it was also opportunity for people to have their own individual cuts, you know, by breaking out of that easy Weezy mode.

Kelly: 29:07

Like I said, I have rocked the mullet for a while, and I'm, I wouldn't do it any other way. That's, that's, that was my look. That was my jam. I mean, I guess if I could have done the Dolph Lundgren thing, I would have but I did never get there.

Alex: 29:22

Now, Kelly, we're 35 minutes in, so your wife is asleep right now. Yes, yeah. So let me, let me ask you this, what kind of hair do you like on women? Oh, what's your favorite kind of cut? Well,

Kelly: 29:36

you know, I'm not big on the fussy haircuts, so I think something that's wash and wear.

Alex: 29:43

What would you consider fussy? Oh, anything. So, so you know what a blowout is. I've heard of it, but I couldn't tell you. I know these salons have places

Kelly: 29:52

there are, and I think it's a Brazilian thing, right? You go in for a blowout where all they do is use the blow dryer to kind. Kind of fluff your hair up when this, this is back to those days when they'll go in once a week, or, you know, every two weeks, to have a blowout, to make their hair. And I guess there's a way to make it stay that way for a while, and

Alex: 30:12

it looks, ends up looking like, like you're in a hair metal band. Yes,

Kelly: 30:18

yes, like you're, you're the lead guitarist for poison or rat or shirt like that. Sure.

Alex: 30:25

Damn Yankees. I

Kelly: 30:27

do like it. Pulled back, I can see short hair looking good, you know, I guess if one thing I like about what my wife does is she changes it up pretty often, like she'll she'll do it differently on different days. It's not always the same.

Alex: 30:42

So you can feel like you're with somebody else.

Kelly: 30:46

I hope she's asleep. Jody, if you're still awake, please don't hit me. So let me ask you a question, how often you get your No, I'm not gonna ask anything about Tracy. How often do you get your hair cut?

Alex: 31:02

About every six weeks? Okay? And

Kelly: 31:05

how often do you wash your hair every single day, every day, huh? Because isn't that sort of advice really?

Alex: 31:15

Because I feel well, I'd never take a shower without washing my hair and the shower every day there's there would never be a time where I would not wash my hair if I'm in the shower. That's ridiculous. You

Kelly: 31:25

know, I remember this really awesome shampoo that you discovered. It's, it's Girl Scout, Thin Mint shampoo.

Alex: 31:34

Native brand is called native, okay,

Kelly: 31:38

okay. Is that your favorite type of shampoo. It

Alex: 31:41

actually is, yeah, really, because it smells like no, not the No, I actually use a different scent, but native is good brand, yeah, like it, hey, hey, if you're listening and you're from native, throw us something a little Yeah,

Kelly: 31:56

yeah. We definitely talk about our hair every episode, if you gave us some sponsorship.

Alex: 32:02

Every episode features some sham we would we'll go back from your earlier episodes and put in if you want to know, we'll talk about typhoid Mary's hair style, right? We'll just insert that stuff into old episodes if you want to throw us some something.

Kelly: 32:21

So I had heard that washing your hair every day dries it out. And not, not that I have a whole lot of hair to

Alex: 32:27

I was gonna say, but you don't have hair and I do. So why are you telling me what's bad for me? Whatever I'm doing works.

Kelly: 32:34

It's true. Mine's all mine's all falling out. So okay, no, I'll go with that. I'll go with that. We're not going to get into hygiene too much. If you want to hear about our hygiene, listen to the Typhoid Mary episode, because we did talk a lot about hand washing and bathing and stuff like that in that episode. But I definitely don't wash my hair every day. I intentionally, like, if I'm I'll take a longer shower after a couple of days. And then there are days I don't if I didn't do anything that really got me sweaty, and then there are days that I'll just rinse off quickly, you know? So

Alex: 33:06

I'll tell you what. I love the feeling of getting my hair washed. I don't know if it takes me back to when I was a kid, my mom would wash my hair, but man, there's nothing better than rolling up at a hair cutting place, putting your hair in that sink, and they make the water, oh, yeah, man. And, and then they gently massage that scalp where it's, it's, it's almost like their nails are in it, but not they back off a little, yeah, yeah. And it's such a good feeling. There's nothing better than getting your hair washed. Man, that's the height of luxury. That's a height of luxury. I see why all these kings and and noblemen that you always talk about why that's that's something that they strive for. I

Kelly: 33:50

have not had that done in probably 10 years because I have not had my hair cut by anyone other than my wife who just, it's just the number one guard on the razor the backyard.

Alex: 34:03

Wow. So during COVID, my wife attempted to cut my hair. She bought a hair cutting set on Amazon. I sat in the bathroom. I sat on a swivel chair when I'm probably the one I'm sitting in right now, and the little kit even came with a cape. Oh, she was so excited. She got these scissors and and she was real excited about getting the tools. And then when it came time to actually do it, it was a disaster. And I'm always very talented a lot of areas, smartest person I've ever met, but it was a struggle, man, to cut my hair. First of all, she would always have me hold all the stuff she wasn't using. So you

Kelly: 34:49

were probably a picky little bitch the whole time too. It was awful. Actually,

Alex: 34:53

I was laughing through the whole thing, and then she would look at and she just did such a bad job of it. But. It I was at the time I was teaching on Zoom, so it didn't really matter what the back of my head looked like. So we only cared about right in the front leg, good. So the back was a disaster. We both agreed that it really didn't matter what the back of it looked like, right? But it was already in party in the back, and she couldn't wait until I went and got but I think she did it two or three times, and it was a mess. Yeah, it was, it was fun, though. It was funny, good, good memories on that. I never got mad about that. I didn't care. Yeah, now what you already kind of told me that you like, I was gonna say, what kind of hair do you like on men? Like, what do you think is a good a good haircut? But I think you're, you already told me your ideal is kind of the dolphin, Dolph Lundgren. How do you feel about dudes with long hair? Like, do you get jealous of that? Or do you, what do you think about that?

Kelly: 35:56

You know, I think certain people could really rock that. But like, if you're going bald at all. You got to just get rid of it. Like you really can't do the the sort of drape down over the shoulders with nothing up top that. Yeah, you cannot do that. You can't do the Bf,

Alex: 36:13

what? What guys do you think have good hair?

Kelly: 36:17

Well, the guy from the commercials of Dos Equis, the most interesting man in the world, or is that modelo?

Alex: 36:27

No, that's, that's, that's a while ago, but that's, that's just a good beard

Kelly: 36:33

he has. He has that curly Gray, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just watched this movie called wolves, and George Clooney has really great hair. And again, that's, that's kind of gray, gray hair. Trying to think of a younger person that you know, kind of like Billy corgan's Look, if you know, completely bald, shiny, shiny bald head. Yeah, yeah. Dave Grohl had some beautiful hair back in the day, and he still has decent hair.

Alex: 37:02

So, so, yeah, you hadn't listed anybody with long hair. But okay, no, oh,

Kelly: 37:06

Dave Grohl. I mean, if you first of all, Dave Grohl was a handsome, very handsome fellow back in the nerve

Alex: 37:13

I think he got better looking with age, actually, really, he's better looking now than he did was in Nirvana, including

Kelly: 37:19

his hair. Though, did you ever see his hair back? Yeah, he had good hair, for sure. And then I'm gonna give it a shout out to my neighbor, Patrick. So Patrick lives kitty corner behind us, like kind of catty corner behind us, and Patrick has long braids. And I think Patrick must be partly Native American because he has just long, beautiful, braided hair and a full head of hair, and he's my age, or maybe a little bit younger, but yeah, Patrick, Patrick, my neighbor,

Alex: 37:48

yeah. How about you? I never was able to grow long hair. My hair doesn't grow down. It grows out like a Yeah, same, same. So I was always kind of jealous of people I would have liked to experiment with long hair at some point in my life, and never got to. It also wouldn't grow real straight. It would and but it wasn't curly either. It would just grow out. But like Eddie Vetter, I think is somebody in the 90s that had really, really anybody that could kind of toss their hair. Yeah, I was jealous of like, yeah. Like Anthony Kiedis, oh no, or Eddie Vedder being able to walk around on the stage and just flip your hair around was always a really, I would have liked to experience that once or twice. You're

Kelly: 38:36

familiar with the band, Soul asylum, yeah. So Dave Perner is their singer's name. And I went to see them once, and he kept doing this thing, and we called it the helicopter, where he was spinning his head around. Yeah, his hair was just going like a helicopter blade in a circle. Yes, that's kind of cool.

Alex: 38:53

And like you, I always thought that long braids or dreadlocks was always really cool. I always, I always, I think Bob Marley had really cool hair. Yeah, yeah, I would have loved to have but, you know, doesn't, not everyone could pull that stuff off. No,

Kelly: 39:12

no, you have to, yeah, you definitely have to own it. And I, I feel like we're a little old to get in that game at this point,

Alex: 39:22

probably, probably, yeah, we're probably stuck with what we rock now, for sure.

Kelly: 39:27

So, so what? What were Vidal's latest like in his latest years? Anything you know is, he said he was given a honor by the queen or by the British government. He moved to LA. He was, did he? Did he have any sort of famous marriages or affairs with people or anything?

Alex: 39:47

No, well, probably, but we won't get into that. But, you know, no, what happened was Proctor and Gamble, kind of mismanaged, in his opinion, mismanaged the brand. Oh,

Kelly: 40:00

so it ended up tasting like glue.

Alex: 40:04

Oh, shout out to the old Colonel Sanders episode two. No, he said that they didn't put as much marketing energy into the Vidal Sassoon brand, you know, a big company like Procter and Gamble that's just another shampoo that they have, you know. And at the time, he said they favored Pantene over over his, yeah. And he actually sued them, because he said that, you know, that wasn't part of the deal. I wasn't just gonna sell this to you so you My name's on this still, you know, you could, so you could destroy my name. And they really kind of ran that into the ground. He also had one of his assistants named Paul Mitchell, got big on, kind of went his own way and did his own thing. And Paul Mitchell designs and Paul Mitchell hair products is something you

Kelly: 40:58

still see, oh, yeah, that's probably bigger than Vidal Sassoon, now,

Alex: 41:01

probably now, yeah, for sure. In fact, when you said, who's another famous hairstylist, that's the one that I was come up with. That just goes to show you the fact that we can't name one of how impressive he was. You know, I mean, it was Mr. Teasy, easy, right? Videl Sassoon, Paul Mitchell, Paul Mitchell, it's basically it. Now I'm sure that if the Holy Trinity, yeah, if we were in the business, I'm sure that if we, even if we were adjacent to the business, if we were actors, we would probably know who the big hair stylists in Hollywood. I mean, that's your those are probably famous people in that world, in that industry, this guy transcended all that. He wasn't just a hair cutting, cutting Mia Farrow's hair, but he was influencing people all over the world and especially in the US, like all the haircuts today are still from the DNA from of the five point cut and and, I mean, I just think that his legacy can't be overstated, that he was, um, like, responsible for the modern look that we think of attractive people these days. If you watch an old movie, those people look different. They look like they're from a different planet then. And, but if you watch a movie from the 70s, those are just styles that keep coming and going, you know what? I mean, yeah, and, and from the 80s, I mean, those things come and go, but they're all like a descendant of this guy's look. So he had a enormous impact on the 20th and 21st century, what we consider to be attractive looks. So

Kelly: 42:47

next time I squirt some shampoo into my hair, I will raise a toast to Mr. Vidal Sassoon. What are you doing every month or so, every month, every month and a half, you're not one of these guys that says, oh, you know, I've heard that horse shampoo is really

Alex: 43:02

because they saw that too, you know, no,

Kelly: 43:05

no, I think, I think we're rocking, actually, some Pantene.

Alex: 43:10

All right. Native, forever. Native, let's do this. Get us on your, uh, advertisers list,

Kelly: 43:17

yeah, we will definitely use your product and talk about it. And, and, you know, with with faces like these, which you probably can't see because you're listening to a podcast, you're gonna want to work with us,

Alex: 43:27

yeah? But you know, if you don't look good, yeah, we don't look good.

Kelly: 43:33

Bye.

Unknown: 43:38

Little on his scissors, was born in England fair, till he gave that Skid Row bum a smile and went and cut his hair. He grew up four, but old, vital had a dream. He became a legend, and his hair was always clean. Before vital came to town, most men wore a hat, and the women went to the salon, eating cheese and getting fat, and it's all because he cut that Skid Row bum's hair. He did it on a dare. Please tell me the story of a Dale who invented wash and wear. He changed the world with scissors until everyone looked grand. He inspired Paul Mitchell and Dave Groh to start a punk rock band by vital Sassoon. He invented all the popular styles, Buzz cuts, bowl cuts, bobs and cheese. Oh, don't offer him a blowout cause that just makes him sneeze. Oh. Vidal Saum got his hair cut. Vidal and his scissors. His family came from Greece. His family's very rich these days, especially his niece, other brothers, sis. His brother, mother's cousin's uncle's dog is even looking please these days like a mullet on a frog. Soon, you know, Buzz cuts, low cuts, bobs and Ts there was before offer him a blowout. It's time for him to go out soon. Got his hair cut. When all of this was finished, he came up with these words, if you don't look good, we don't look bad. Hair is for the birds. Air. When all of this was finished, he came up with these words, if you don't look good, We don't look good. Bad hair is for the birds.