Mia Farrow has a look so iconic, that her name is mentioned pretty much every time a celebrity gets a short haircut. While she earned sartorial praise in the 60s and 70s for her laid-back look and penchant for pretty peter pan collars, it’s her hair that earnt Farrow her true style icon status.
Mia owns the pixie crop.
Farrow won a Golden Globe for her role in Roman Polanski’s horror film Rosemary’s Baby, and it was the pixie cut that the actress shows off in this film that became her signature style.
So the story goes that hair legend Vidal Sassoon was flown onto the set of the film to cut Farrow’s long blonde locks off for the movie, costing the production in excess of $5,000. "It's Vidal Sassoon. It's very in,” Farrow’s character Rosemary says in the film.
Legend also has it that her then-husband Frank Sinatra was so against the cut that he served her with divorce papers after she went for the chop.
And while these stories will go down in hair folklore, Mia Farrow cleared up the hair-tale, after the NY Times printed a story about her career-changing Sassoon cut.
In a 2013 letter to the NY Times, Farrow told the real story of her famous haircut.
"I had literally cut it myself earlier that year - with a pair of fingernail scissors... My then-boyfriend, Frank Sinatra, loved the cut, and so I kept it short.
“...Vidal Sassoon is mentioned in the book Rosemary's Baby and the film. So, Paramount decided to stage a photo shoot in which Mr Sassoon trummed my 1.5 inch hair to 1 inch. The whole event was taken in good spirits.
“I intend no disrespect to Mr Sassoon, but he had nothing to do with my haircut. Neither, I can assure you, did my divorce from Frank Sinatra have to do with my haircut."
And if further proof were needed, Farrow’s wedding pictures to Frank Sinatra clearly show the actress cutting her cake with her signature itty-bitty crop. So there… Not only did Farrow rock the crop, she cut it herself, too.
Farrow’s prolific acting career included starring opposite Robert Redford in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Great Gatsby (1974), her modelling career spanned the decades and she continues her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Her celebrity friends included Liza Minnelli, Sinatra (with whom she remained friends following their divorce), The Beatles and The Beach Boys.
Her signature pixie crop, worn with lashings of mascara and a swipe of lip gloss, will forever be in Vogue.
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