John Frieda, the British hairstylist who created era-defining looks for royals and Hollywood stars before building a retail hair care empire, died on Tuesday. He was 75.
The John Frieda Salon in London announced the death in a statement on Instagram. No further details were provided.
Mr. Frieda was a fixture of London’s high-fashion salon scene in the 1960s and ’70s. In a career of more than five decades, his clients included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Princess Diana, Raquel Welch, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman. He opened his first salon in London in 1976 and later expanded to New York and Los Angeles, as well as seasonal and resort salons in destinations that included Ibiza, Spain, and Barbados.
He was celebrated for creating signature looks, most notably the “Purdey” — the sleek, rounded bowl cut with bangs named for Joanna Lumley’s character in the television series “The New Avengers.” The style set off a craze in Britain after the show premiered in 1976; when Mr. Frieda opened his salon on New Cavendish Street that year, it was booked solid for the next six months.
Alan Howard Frieda was born in London on July 5, 1951. Hairdressing was in his lineage: his father, Isidore Frieda, owned a salon in West London, and his grandfather had been a barber on Fleet Street. When Alan left school at 16, his father was furious, having hoped his son would become a doctor. Rather than hiring him, his father told him to seek an apprenticeship with Leonard Lewis, the hairstylist known professionally as Leonard of Mayfair, whose salon was then the epicenter of London hair fashion.
Mr. Frieda later credited the salon with providing an unrivaled education, putting him in the company of leading fashion photographers, makeup artists and stylists. It was also where he changed his first name.
“In the salon you go by your first name,” he told The Times of London in June. “There was another Alan. You can’t have two hairdressers going by the same name.”
With his polished looks — The Evening Standard once said there was a “touch of Robert Redford about him”— and his marriage to the Scottish pop singer Lulu, Mr. Frieda cultivated an outsize public persona. He performed live hair makeovers on talk shows. In the late 1980s, he parlayed the success of his salons into hit mass-market products such as Frizz Ease and Sheer Blonde.
His salon’s clientele could test even the most unflappable stylist. The London hairdresser Michael Van Clarke, who trained under Mr. Frieda, recalled one day when three European monarchs — Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Sofía of Spain and Queen Anne-Marie of Greece — arrived on the same afternoon.
“John was panicking,” Mr. Van Clarke said on Instagram, describing Mr. Frieda frantically trying to calculate royal protocol to determine who was entitled to the premier styling chair, and where each fell in the diplomatic hierarchy.
Mr. Frieda recalled that his big commercial break arrived when the British retailer Boots agreed to test his products in 40 stores. He demonstrated a thickening lotion and styling wax on daytime television, and the response was overwhelming. “It went crazy,” he told the British Beauty Council, a nonprofit organization, in June. “People were calling the TV show and Boots to try and get hold of the products.”
In 2002, the Japanese consumer goods conglomerate Kao Corporation acquired his product business, John Frieda Professional Hair Care, in a deal valued at $450 million. Mr. Frieda retained ownership of his salons.
In 1976, Mr. Frieda married Lulu, whose hits included the title tracks to the films “To Sir With Love” and “The Man With the Golden Gun.” They had a son, Jordan, before divorcing.
He later married Avery Agnelli, the widow of the Italian industrialist Giovanni Alberto Agnelli. Along with his wife and his son Jordan, Mr. Frieda is survived by two children from his second marriage, Jackson and Leyla, and a stepdaughter, Asia Agnelli Lagrange.
Reflecting this year on his 50 years in the salon business, Mr. Frieda attributed his success to an obsessive attention to detail that began during his apprenticeship with Leonard of Mayfair.
“Whatever I set my mind to, I want to do it better than anybody else,” Mr. Frieda told the beauty council.
“When I started out I had to fold towels, which is a bit of a boring job,” he said. “But I decided, if I’m going to fold my towels, I’ll do it better than anybody else who’s ever folded a towel. So, you know, it was beautifully, immaculately done. Leonard saw it, and when he needed a new assistant, he said, ‘Who’s that new kid who’s quite serious and who folds the towels really well?’”
Penelope Green contributed reporting.
The post John Frieda, Hairdresser to Royalty Who Built a Beauty Empire, Dies at 75 appeared first on New York Times.
