Vidal Sassoon is a British-born Israeli whose father was Greek and whose mother was Spanish. Sassoon decided that if he must be a hairdresser, he would have to be the best, so he went religiously to the theatre to tune his ear and voice to "posh" English, and found work in the West End. He was the most significant hairdresser to emerge from the sixties phenomenon of “Swinging London” and his “Nancy Kwan” cut and “Mary Quant” bob cut became defining looks of the era. Vidal Sassoon has been called "the founder of modern hairdressing." Photographed by Jack Robinson in New York on March 7, 1969.