Brand-name hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, who relaxed women’s hair in the 1950s with his simple wash-and-wear cuts, then tightened it up again in the ’60s, died this morning at his home on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. He was 84 and had been suffering from leukemia since 2009 (the same year he was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire). Police officers who were summoned to the home about 10:30 AM determined that he had died of natural causes. According to a Los Angeles Times profile in 1999, the London-born Sassoon went to work at age 14, as a shampoo boy responsible for mixing dyes, bleach powder, peroxide, and ammonia. “The ammonia jar was kept locked up because if you spilled it, it would clean out the sinuses of the block, not just the salon,” he said. In 1954, he opened his first salon in London, but it wasn’t until the ’60s that he perfected his cut-is-everything technique. “When I first came into hair, women were coming in and you’d place a hat on their hair and you’d dress their hair around it,” he said. “We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes, and bone structure. The cut had to be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.” He’s responsible for those severe mod hairdos of the Swinging Sixties and his styles included the bob, the five-point cut and the Greek Goddess, a short, tousled perm inspired by the “Afro-marvelous-looking women” he said he saw in New York’s Harlem. Sassoon opened a salon in New York in 1973, and debuted his Vidal Sassoon line of hair-care products that year. Not long after, he moved to Los Angeles. He was married four times. (Please, see also: Ashen Lady)