John Frieda has died aged 75, ending a career that linked London salons to a global hair care business. His salon said he passed away peacefully surrounded by his family.
He built that reach through Frizz Ease, launched in 1988, and Sheer Blonde, launched in 1998. Frieda also sold his hair care company to Kao in 2002 in a deal valued at $450m, while keeping five salons of his own.
Jo Wood and Cetera Lamb
Cetera Lamb said the industry had lost “a true legend” and “a real maverick in hairdressing,” adding that he led the salon for 50 years. Jo Wood wrote that when she was 16 and Frieda was an assistant at Leonards, he did her hair and they would go to the pub after, even if she could not drink.
Those tributes came quickly because Frieda’s name was never limited to one salon chair. He styled Twiggy, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Madonna, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman and Diana, Princess of Wales, and he created the Purdey hairstyle for Joanna Lumley in 1976 for The New Avengers TV series.
London, New York and Los Angeles
He opened his first salon in 1976 at age 25, then moved to the United States in 1990 to focus on the brand that had already taken shape around his product lines. After the 2002 sale, he kept two salons in London, two in New York and one in Los Angeles.
The family statement and the salon tributes leave one fact hanging: the cause of death has not been made public. For readers who knew Frieda through the products, the business story is already settled; the missing detail is the one that explains whether this was a sudden loss or the end of an illness kept private.
