London has been a hair capital since the 1960s, when Vidal Sassoon, working from Bond Street in Mayfair, replaced the stiff set with precise, geometric cuts that moved freely, among them the five-point cut. The city's history of hair runs from the powdered wigs still worn by some barristers and judges to the Eton crop of the 1920s and the punk styles of the 1970s.

Sassoon and the swinging sixties

Vidal Sassoon opened his first salon in Mayfair in 1954. His cuts relied on sharp lines and the natural fall of the hair, needing no rollers or lacquer, and the bob he cut for the actress Nancy Kwan in 1963 and the five-point cut of 1964 became symbols of the decade. In 1966 the model Twiggy's cropped hair, cut by Leonard of Mayfair, made the short pixie famous. Sassoon's academies trained hairdressers from around the world.

Wigs and crops

Barristers and judges in England and Wales have worn wigs of horsehair since the late 17th century; since 2008 they are no longer worn in most civil and family cases but remain in criminal courts. In 1761 the artist William Hogarth mocked court and legal wigs in his print The Five Orders of Periwigs. In the 1920s London women adopted the Eton crop, shorter than the bob, named after the boys of Eton College.