the Beatles ran in Charles Wintour’s
Evening Standard
. That same day the Beatles were at the Abbey Road Studios recording what would quickly become their first American number one hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
Cleave’s series, pushed by Anna’s highly competitive editor father, who ran the story idea by his with-it teenage daughter who kept her eye on who and what was in and out, had helped to catapult the most successful singing group in music history.
Anna’s bob had helped, too. If Cleave hadn’t been wearing it, the Beatles might not have been so friendly and open, and she might not have gotten their story. In any case, it didn’t hurt.
In its 1963 incarnation, the bob was the brainchild of Vidal Sassoon, who had a shop in posh and fashionable Mayfair that had catered for centuries to London’s upper classes and royalty. Sassoon’s guinea pig was the fashion designer and sometimes model Mary Quant, the epitome of the with-it, mini-skirted swinging London chick. She was thrilled with the cut and decided to have all of her models given the bob by Sassoon. A British
Vogue
editor, attending Quant’s show, was overwhelmed. “At last,” she wrote, “hair is going to look like hair again.”
Other trendy haircutters soon jumped on the bob bandwagon, such as Leonard of Mayfair, where Leslie Russell gave Anna her very first bob. “Anna was about fourteen, fifteen when she came in. She had hair way past her shoulders, like Jean Shrimpton’s. She said she saw photos in [British]
Vogue
ofsome cuts that I did, and I remember she came in with a picture she’d torn from
Vogue
. And so I cut her hair, and it was
the
haircut of the time, which
everyone
was getting—the straight hair, the long fringe, the same bob she has today.”
Mainly, Anna chose Leonard of Mayfair over Sassoon because two of her idols got their bobs there—Maureen Cleave, and a kicky nineteen-year-old former ten-pound-a-week secretary named Cathy McGowan, who overnight jumped to the forefront of the British pop revolution as the trendy host of a top-rated music television program
Ready, Steady, Go!
, Britain’s version of
American Bandstand
. Virtually every teen from London to Liverpool—and Anna was no exception—tuned in early on Friday evenings, 6:07 P.M., to be precise, before they went out clubbing. The show’s energized motto was “The Weekend Starts Here!”
Teenage Anna adored Cathy McGowan, who wore the trendiest boutique fashions and the latest makeup styles, and featured the jargon, the attitude, and the sensibility of mid-sixties happening London. Anna would come away from the TV each week knowing what to buy, where to buy it, and how to wear it.
“Cathy was a client of mine,” Leslie Russell says. “She had the bob, and Anna had read in a magazine or a newspaper that I’d cut Cathy’s hair, and that was another reason for her coming to me. It suited Anna
perfectly
. And still does. She’s got those nice cheekbones, which looked perfect for that look of the time. Certainly in those days she had perfect, shiny, thick light brown hair, very good hair to hang straight, with a bit of blow drying to turn the hair under a bit. Anna was
very
sixties looking.”
Scores of super birds and dollies passed through Leonard of Mayfair in those days, but Russell never forgot Anna’s look: short,
short
miniskirts; low-heeled, pointed shoes; tight tank tops; and very little makeup—“some eye shadow and mascara, but that was about it. She was
not
red lips and caked up. She didn’t need it.”
Besides going to Leslie Russell to have her hair cut, Anna paid particular attention to the health of her tresses and began getting scalp treatments and buying special-formula hair products from a bespectacled man named Philip Kingsley, who took hair quite seriously. He originally planned to become adoctor, but visits to his uncle’s hair salon got him interested in hair care. Instead of medical school, he became certified as a