London Calling: ‘Flash Bobs’ Take Over Sassoon’s Spiritual Home in Celebration of 70th Birthday

When Vidal Sassoon helped conceptualize the bob – a blunt, one-length haircut in which the hair grazes the jawline – it wasn’t just a hairstyle. For the brand, it heralded a cultural shift for women to a low-maintenance style, freeing them from weekly salon appointments, stiff lacquered hair and hours under the hood dryer.

In celebration of the brand’s 70th birthday, the Vidal Sassoon team sent models and clients – including Swing Out Sister’s Corinne Drewery – a lifelong Sassoon client – with the brand’s signature bob cuts to London streets, the spiritual home of Sassoon, following the “Flash Bobs” in New York and LA.

From the streets of Soho to Buckingham Palace, the models, aged 17-70, turned heads as crowds gathered to photograph this modish movement.

Since its popularity in the 1960s, the bob remains a go-to cut all these years later, emerging as the uncontested style of 2024 and seen on celebrities including Margot Robbie, Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Zendaya, Nicole Kidman, Rita Ora, Jennifer Lopez, Raye, Carey Mulligan and Hailey Bieber.

House of Sassoon

The newly opened House of Sassoon in Soho’s Greek St is an innovative academy and salon concept, with a sister House of Sassoon launched simultaneously on Wilshire Boulevard Beverly Hills. The Soho location nods to Sassoon’s link with the fashion industry (it was sponsorship from Sassoon that saved London Fashion Week from closure in 1994) as the building was formerly home to Central Saint Martin Fashion College and Conde Nast College of Fashion and Design. The academy is launching a new bob course offering delegates to learn the original cut from the originators.

Sassoon says it has a heritage and an affinity with London that stretches back to the original Bond Street Salon, which opened in 1954. As the originator of the bob, Vidal Sassoon looked after a who’s who of models, actors and press, namely, Twiggy, Mia Farrow, Mary Quant, Grace Coddington, Goldie Hawn, Nancy Kwan, Cameron Diaz and Helen Mirren, with photographers clamoring to shoot his latest looks. A celebrity in his own right, he hosted a TV chat show in the US.

House of Sassoon is revered throughout the hair industry globally as the place to learn to cut a bob, the technique for which forms the backbone of the majority of modern day styles.

The Bobs Course will be held in London on Aug. 11 and12; in New York City on Oct 6 and 7; in Beverly Hills on Sept. 8 and 9; Manchester on Sept. 23 and 24; Scottsdale on Oct. 27 and 28; and in Boston, to be confirmed.