How Trevor Sorbie transformed the way we wear our hair

The year was 1979, Margaret Thatcher had become the first female British prime minister, you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Blondie’s Heart of Glass, and the Iranian hostage crisis dominated the news. Amid all this, Trevor Sorbie, a young hairdresser originally from Paisley, Renfrewshire, was opening his first major hair salon, in Covent Garden, no less.

Far from the beauty destination it is today, the area of vibrant, artistic shops was none the less at the forefront of fashion, music and art. Paul Smith also opened that year in the now legendary Floral Street. Sorbie had first achieved fame for his Wedge haircut, created in 1974 while working for the godfather of all British hairdressers, Vidal Sassoon.

He then worked at John Frieda, where he became known for creating the Scrunch, a tousled hairstyle with a technique as onomatopoeic as it sounds – you scrunch up the hair in your hands and stuff a hairdryer into the centre of it. When a salon owner offered to set Sorbie up with his own salon, in return for owning 50 per cent of the business, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Best of all, as he once told me, it hadn’t cost him a penny of his own money.

Forty-five years on, it’s no mean feat that in today’s volatile commercial environment, the Covent Garden flagship is still a thriving hair salon. A whole host of artists, actors and pop stars have traipsed through the doors to see Sorbie. Everyone from Siouxsie Sioux to Adam Ant and Grace Jones has found themselves drawn to the aspiring artist-turned-hairdresser’s imaginative use of colour and cut.

He had wanted to be an artist but was forced to leave school early due to being bullied, though sketching and painting remained a skill he enjoyed throughout his life. From his daring rock and roll haircuts such as “the Wolf”, to the distinctive, razor-finished colour-dipped hairstyles of Annie Lennox, he seemed to take everything he learnt from Sassoon and nudge it farther along, making it his own, in perfect synchronicity with whatever was going on culturally around him.

A product line followed in the 1980s, which was successful on both sides of the Atlantic. While the accolades were many – from the MBE he was awarded in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to hairdressing (the first hairdresser to be given the honour), to winning the British Hairdresser of the Year title four times – when asked about his proudest achievement, he would often cite his charity, My New Hair.

Sorbie set up the organisation after helping his sister-in-law with a wig that looked more like real hair as she underwent chemotherapy for bone cancer. The charity now trains hairdressers to cut wigs in a more natural way.

Sorbie was himself diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2019, and died on Friday. He will go down as one in the lineup of British hairdressing legends – from Raymond “Teasy-Weasy” Bessone, to Sassoon, to Rose Evansky and Leonard of Mayfair – who have impacted our hair aesthetic over the years and influenced some of today’s biggest stars in hairdressing, most notably, in Sorbie’s case, Eugene Souleiman, whom he mentored.

But over and above that, he touched not just the heads of many, but also their hearts, and will be greatly missed by all who walked through those Covent Garden doors to see him. His will always be more than just a name above the door.

Five hair lessons we’ve learnt from Trevor Sorbie

Learn from the greats; teach the greats

Hairdressing was in Sorbie’s blood, with the stylist first working in his father’s barber shop, and then training to be a lady’s hairdresser after his parents paid £100 for him to do a six-month course. His first job at Vidal Sassoon almost didn’t work out – he left after a short period, before returning in his early 20s and then going on to work for John Frieda. After setting up on his own, Sorbie mentored a series of celebrated artistic directors, including Eugene Souleiman, Antoinette Beenders, Sally Brooks, Angelo Seminara and Tom Connell.

The Wedge

Appearing on a double-page spread in Vogue in 1974 – believed to be the first hairdressing picture to do so – the Wedge is perhaps Sorbie’s most famous creation, and was first demonstrated at a Vidal Sassoon show in Paris. With its roots in the famous Sassoon five-point bob, the cut has an angular fullness at the back which adds drama, perfectly capturing the spirit of the time.

The Scrunch

It was while working at John Frieda that Sorbie created his famous “Scrunch” drying technique. In part designed as a way to speed up the time in the chair for impatient clients, he found that by scrunching up the hair at the ends and moving up bit by bit towards the scalp, a natural, textured look was achieved, which, combined with a sharp bob cut, had a soft yet fashionable edge to it.

From disaster comes opportunity – the Prime Suspect look

Helen Mirren’s sleek, short bob for the character of Detective Jane Tennison in the ITV drama Prime Suspect screamed “dangerous” when it was first revealed, but it started out rather differently, with Sorbie creating it to rectify his first attempt at cutting Mirren’s hair, and having to sell the new cut to his famous client as a deliberate move to create something more modern. Luckily it worked, becoming a 1990s classic.

It’s about more than just the hair

The best legacy of all? Visit the Trevor Sorbie hair salon in Covent Garden today and you can’t help but feel the love for this hairdressing legend among his staff. Despite being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2019, Sorbie only recently stopped working there, making regular visits and taking part in the salon’s most recent campaign. Gracious, good-humoured and always the gentleman, he remains an inspiration to his creative director, Guiseppe Stelitano, and his team, some of whom worked with Sorbie for 30 years.