Happy Birthday Kate Moss!  Photos from My Personal CollectionPhotography was once offered to me on a silver platter by a client in my salon in Hampstead High Street in London. Her husband, Gerry Green, was an Art Director for one of the top advertising agencies and she asked me-- on his behalf --“Harold, would you like to do some hair for a Max Factor ad?”“Yes!”was my reply and they paid me handsomely for this.

I worked and pleased him so that he gave me all the session work for Yardley, Max Factor Gala, Goya and Revlon. Soon after this and within a year I was working as a session hairdresser for Vogue and became one of the top session hairdressers in the UK which brought me to my life today. I was schooled to be the “numero uno” session hairdresser of that period. I started with doing the hair for the number one model in the sixties, Jean Shrimpton, moving onto hundreds of high end models--Verushka, Mouche, Penelope Tree, Celia Hammond, Pauleen Stone, and Tania Mallett-- from the late 1960s until I left London in 2003.

At one point, I booked an unknown model who became the best and most long-lasting model. Her name was Kate Moss and you still see her in all the magazines around the world looking bloody marvelous.  I am thrilled to have walked the walk and chosen this young unknown eighteen-year-old (I had good taste!) doing her hair for a Paul Mitchell product shoot in London. Six months later, this eighteen-year-old model became “Kate Moss for Calvin Klein” and my hair photos hit the pages of magazines and newspapers all over the world.

Happy Birthday Kate Moss!  Photos from My Personal Collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a first time these photos of Kate are being seen like this as they are from my personal photographic collection.

There was such wonderful hairdressing talent around in those years; that’s how I learnt and am still learning this wonderful industry from people like Beenders, Soulaman and others. I enjoy the industry even more today, if that is possible, an industry that breeds talent of such great class and quality. In the early days not many of us knew what we were doing or where it would to take us.

I can only thank Mr. and Mrs. Gerry Green and brother Sydney Pizan, their  photographer,  along with other great photographers that I worked with, David Baily, Barry Lategan Norman Eales, Terry Donavan, Helmut Newton Vic Singh Tony Rawlingson, Mike Barnet, Norman Parkinson, Terry ONeill, Hatami, and so many others for teaching me so much.

Harold Leighton

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