Trevor Sorbie, Scottish barber’s son who became an award-winning hairstylist to the stars

He coiffed Queen Elizabeth II in her later years and founded a charity to help those who suffer hair loss due to medical treatment

Trevor Sorbie, who has died of cancer aged 75, began life in a tenement block in Scotland but rose to become a leading international hair stylist with an A-list of clients including Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones, Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams and Helen Mirren.
On his way up he worked for some of Britain’s most famous hairdressers, including as a creative director at Vidal Sassoon. In 1974, when Sassoon was asked to do a show in Paris, the creative directors were told to come up with new hairstyles. Sorbie created “The Wedge’’, which featured in a double-page spread in Vogue and was sported by the likes of David Bowie.
Sorbie went on to open a string of salons and hairdressing academies, from London to Dubai – even China – and put his name on hair-product ranges. He was named British hairdresser of the year four times and in 2004 he became the first hairdresser to be appointed MBE.
The ceremony at Buckingham Palace won him a new client. Queen Elizabeth II was said to have spotted him on TV makeover shows, and was reportedly keen to enlist him, saying: “I understand you do some rather strange hairstyles. I have seen your work on the telly. We must talk soon.”
Sorbie, however, emphasised that he had no plans to change her 1950s-style bouffant: “We are talking about the Queen,” he said. “If she wants her hair like that, who am I to say otherwise? I might end up with my head on a spike.”
For the nearly two decades until her death, the Queen’s hair was coiffed twice a week by Sorbie, and later by his colleague Ian Carmichael. Carmichael was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 2017.
Trevor Sorbie was born on March 13 1949 in Paisley, Scotland, the younger of two sons of Robert Sorbie, a barber and former army sergeant, and his wife Edna, née Saxby, and brought up in a tenement block. He recalled having mince and potatoes for Christmas dinner, and every Friday night he and his brother shared a tin bath. “I’ve never forgotten that. It’s made me appreciate everything I’ve got,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2006.
When Trevor was 11 his family moved to Essex, where his father opened a barber’s shop in Ilford. Bullied at school due to his Scottish accent, young Trevor left aged 15 to work for his father. But the pair “got on each others’ nerves”, and when Trevor was 20 his father set him up in his own shop in Edmonton, north London.
Trevor soon got fed up with buzz cuts and “short-back-and-sides”. Deciding that women’s styles looked more interesting, he enrolled at the Richard Henry School of Hairdressing, where his talent was spotted by the principal.
In 1972 he joined Vidal Sassoon’s Grosvenor House salon, recalling that meeting the famous hair stylist for the first time was “a bit like meeting Tom Cruise. I literally lost my breath. I thought, that’s the man!” They became great friends, and when Sassoon died in 2012 Sorbie described it as the saddest day of his professional life.
“Some of the best hairdressers in the world worked at Sassoon,” Sorbie recalled. “When I worked there, I didn’t sit in the staff room during my breaks, I stood on the floor and watched them work. I thought that if I worked hard there was no reason why I couldn’t get to their level.”
He soon did, and within 18 months he had been appointed creative director. In 1979 he opened the first Trevor Sorbie salon in Floral Street in Covent Garden, and his company went on to open salons around Britain and further afield, including in New York and on cruise liners, becoming the hairstylist of choice for a galaxy of entertainment industry stars.
Despite his commercial success, Sorbie admitted he could not read a profit-and-loss sheet. “I’ve a business partner [who] goes to bed thinking about making money and I go to bed thinking about creating great hairstyles,” he told the Telegraph. As well as the Wedge, trend-setting styles he developed included the Wolfman, a wild, hacked-about style popular with punks, and a fast-drying process called the Scrunch.
In 1985 he demonstrated his techniques on the ITV series Hair, and went on to become a fixture on daytime television shows including This Morning.
In 2004, however, an interviewer was surprised to find a rather insecure man who admitted ending up in hospital a few days after his latest British Hairdresser of the Year award. “I was believing I was no good; that I couldn’t do hair,” he said. “I have a chest problem but I still smoke because I am so nervous. And my digestive system is a mess. I don’t eat all day and then eat very late at night and always have heartburn.”
In 2019, on Desert Island Discs, he admitted that, during the early 2000s he came close to committing suicide after becoming a victim of a tabloid “kiss-and-tell” exposé, and he was sectioned for a month under the Mental Health Acts. Buying a dog and taking it for regular walks helped him to overcome his mental health issues.
His own problems made him highly sympathetic to the health problems of others. In 2006 he began volunteering at Princess Alice Hospice in Esher, Surrey, and became an ambassador for Hairdressers of the World Against Aids.
In 2009 he founded a charity, My New Hair, moved by the experience of styling a wig for his sister-in-law, Jackie, who had been undergoing chemotherapy for bone cancer. The charity gives advice to patients and NHS staff on wig styling, hair loss and re-growth after treatment, and Sorbie gave courses to hairdressers on how to cut wigs and communicate with people with terminal illnesses.
In 2018 he launched a free wig customisation service for NHS patients who have experienced medical hair loss. “I am just a hairdresser but I have found out that I am a little bit more than that, too,” he said.
“I will stop hairdressing in one year from now,” he told Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs. “But I will continue to do the wigs for cancer patients in my house… That’s my future, really, just cutting wigs and taking my dog for a walk.”
That was in March 2019. But later on that year he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Last month he told This Morning viewers that the cancer had spread to his liver and that he “might not make Christmas”.
Sorbie’s first two marriages, to Susan Harre and Kristine Szewczyk, were dissolved, probably due, he admitted, to his overriding passion for his work. He is survived by his third wife, Carole, and by a daughter from his first marriage.
Trevor Sorbie, born March 13 1949, died November 8 2024