When I was 17 years old, back in the late 1970s, my first job was as a Junior Secretary and Receptionist for a successful London Architect's practice, McDonald Hamilton & Montefiore, located at the very affluent address of 100 Jermyn Street, Piccadilly, London.
Number 100 was a tall, skinny building with 4 floors and very steep stairs. It faced the back entrance of 'Simpsons of Piccadilly', which is currently Waterstones and, I'm pleased to say, still retains the iconic, uninterrupted curved glass frontage designed to reduce reflection for window shoppers.
Tony Montefiore's (of McDonald Hamilton & Montefiore) Secretary, Bernice, was my absolute mentor and I owe a great deal to her for showing me the foundations of what I needed to learn - on the job - to be a good, all round, efficient and organised Secretary-cum-PA-cum-Administrator. She showed me the ropes - including how to use the PABX 4 x 18 telephone switchboard, how to change the ribbon on the electric Golfball typewriter, the format for typing up the lengthy Architect's Instructions (7 carbon copies - if you made a typing mistake you had to tippex out the error 7 times and re-type over it!), how to expertly fold the large A3 size Architect's drawings into a neat A4 package and how to carefully balance a tray full of tea-filled cups and saucers plus biscuit barrel, for the never-ending meetings that were held three steep flights up in the Board Room.
And how does this all relate to the inspirational and ground-breaking hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, you may well ask?! I won't keep you in suspense any longer.......
My marvellous mentor Bernice had a friend who was the Manager of the very swish Vidal Sassoon New Bond Street hair salon! Earning just £50 a week wasn't going to get me anywhere near a VS 'wash and wear' haircut by even one of his Junior Stylists - BUT - because of Bernice, I was given first pickings and jumped the queue at the very popular Vidal Sassoon apprenticeship student cutting nights!
After I had finished work at 5.30 p.m., I could stroll up to New Bond Street, enter the very magical VS hair salon door and be transported to an evening of pure hair pampering, be given endless cups of VS coffee whilst having my locks expertly cut and teased into the latest fashionable asymmetric designs, all the while being guided hair-by-hair from the student Senior Trainers. This was my chance to have the latest geometric yet organic haircut at a fraction of the price that the Mayfair 'ladies-who-lunch' would normally pay. Never mind the fact that the students were so meticulous in their work that one hair-cut sitting could take anything up to three hours! I often arrived home at 10 p.m. tired and hungry but beautifully coiffeured and on Cloud Nine!
I remember having a version of the cut in the photograph that you can see, bottom left. Just imagine my pride the next morning as I confidently walked from Piccadilly underground station to my office in Jermyn Street, my head held high, sporting my new, very fashionable Vidal Sassoon haircut!
One of VS's most famous quotes is: "If I was going to be in hairdressing, I wanted to change things. I wanted to eliminate the superfluous and get down to the basic angles of cut and shape." From Vidal's humble beginnings in Hammersmith and being sent to an orphanage because his mother was so poor, he achieved great things. He is an inspiration to us all.
THANK YOU VIDAL SASSOON! .....and Bernice, of course!