John Frieda, the celebrity hairstylist behind the bestselling Frizz-Ease hair care line, has died at the age of 75, his salon announced on Instagram.
The official statement reads: “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that our dear John passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family. John was more than a mentor to us; he was a true icon of the hair industry.”
Alan Howard Frieda was born in 1951 in London. Like his father and grandfather, he chose a career in hairdressing and was employed at Leonard Lewis’s House of Leonard salon.
His name was changed from Alan to John because of another stylist who shared the same name in the salon.
In addition to working for British Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines, he founded his own first salon in New Cavendish Street in 1976 and invented an unusual haircut named Purdey for Joanna Lumley from The New Avengers.
His clients included not only Twiggy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Princess Diana but also Madonna, Nicole Kidman, and Scarlett Johansson. He got married to the famous Scottish singer Lulu in 1977; however, after 14 years, he divorced her. In 2019, he married Avery Agnelli, a widow of one of Fiat’s heirs.
In the 1990s, Frieda stopped cutting hair and devoted himself entirely to building a product empire.
His Frizz-Ease, which he introduced in 1988, became one of the world’s top moneymakers, and in 2002 he, together with his business partner Gail Federici, sold the company to the Japanese corporation Kao for $450 million.
Tributes poured in, with model Jo Wood recalling that Frieda did her hair when she was 16, and Cetera Lamb, creative director of his London salon, calling him “a true legend, a real maverick in hairdressing.”
