Hair salon in Olbia · Total Look
Cutting techniques: from Sassoon to today
The modern haircut was born in London in 1954, when Vidal Sassoon decided a perfect cut should need no hairspray: hair is 'material in motion'. Since then the craft has been applied geometry — elevation, graduation, over-direction. Here are the techniques we use every day, and where they come from.
WhatsApp reply the same day · Tue–Sat 9:00–17:00
The Sassoon revolution
When Vidal Sassoon opened his Bond Street salon in 1954, teased bouffants and lacquer ruled. His opposite idea — openly inspired by the Bauhaus: "getting rid of the superfluous" — was that a technically perfect cut falls back into shape on its own. The 1963 Five Point Cut, worn by Mary Quant and Grace Coddington, was "a geometric shape cut to the bone structure"; Britannica credits Sassoon with freeing women from the weekly salon set with "wash-and-wear" hair. The same year he cut actress Nancy Kwan's waist-length hair into the famous graduated bob.
The grammar of cutting: elevation and graduation
In the world's standard textbook (Milady Standard Cosmetology), every cut is described by elevation — the angle the section is held from the head: at 0° you build a solid weight line (blunt cut), below 90° you build weight (graduation — the classic wedge is cut at 45°), at 90° and above you remove weight and create layers. Over-direction — combing the section away from its natural fall before cutting — places length and weight exactly where the stylist wants them.
Scissors, razor and texturising
Each tool leaves a different signature: blunt cutting creates a full line that makes fine hair look thicker; point cutting softens the ends; slide cutting blends lengths together. A razor cuts the shaft at an angle, producing feathered ends and a softer fall — great on medium and fine textures, to avoid when maximum density is the goal.
Wet or dry?
Milady instructs cutting wet hair 0.6–1.3 cm longer than the target, because hair shrinks as it dries — curls by as much as 5 cm. Hence two schools for curly hair: dry cutting curl-by-curl (the Deva method, born at New York's Devachan salon) which works on the real fall, and Ouidad's wet "carve and slice", which cuts curls to fit together like puzzle pieces. We choose based on curl type and target shape.
An ancient trade
The profession has long roots: from the 12th to the 18th century European barbers doubled as surgeons ("doctors of the short robe"); in the 1870s Marcel Grateau invented the wave that bears his name, and in 1906 Charles Nestlé patented the first permanent wave in London — it took up to 10 hours.
Sources
Last updated: June 2026