Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam (First Edition, inscribed in the year of publication) by Vidal Sassoon - 1968

London: Cassell, 1968. First UK Edition, preceding all others. INSCRIBED by Sassoon on the half title page: "To Gerald Naborro / Thank you / Vidal Sassoon / Dorchester Hotel / 26.4.68 / It was very kind of you."

A memoir by the legendary hair designer, written when he was 40 years old and at the height of his popularity and influence on woman's fashion. Sassoon was born into extreme poverty, with seven years of his childhood spent in an orphanage. He quit school at age 14, became a hairstylist at the suggestion of his mother, and after a mercurial rise to fame had a chain of shops and a line of products. He mentored Paul Mitchell, who also became a great hairstylist and icon. Mitchell has described Sassoon as "the greatest hair stylist in the history of the world."

Sassoon's lasting contribution to fashion was to liberate women's hair from the high maintenance styles of the previous decade, creating casual and modern looks that matched the emerging fashions of the day. He caused an international sensation with his reintroduction of the bob hair cut on Nancy Kwan for 1963's "The Wild Affair," created a shorter and more angular version of it, known as the five point cut, for British model Grace Coddington, and was flown to Los Angeles by Roman Polanski for a press event where he cut Mia Farrow's long hair into the iconic pixie cut she wears in "Rosemary's Baby."

Sassoon went on to write another autobiography several decades later, published in 2010, only a year prior to his death.

Near Fine in a bright, Near Fine dust jacket.