John Frieda Styled Princess Diana and Sold His Brand for £260 Million
The British hairstylist who counted Princess Diana, Twiggy, and Jackie Onassis among his clients died on November 3 at 75. He had already converted his salon expertise into a haircare brand that Kao Corporation paid £260 million to own.
John Frieda died on November 3, 2026, aged 75. His official Instagram account announced the news: "It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that our dear John passed away peacefully surrounded by his family." No cause of death was given.
The name on the bottle did not come from nowhere. Frieda (born Alan Howard Frieda in London in 1951) spent his early career in London's most rarefied salons, working under Leonard Lewis at House of Leonard, the stylist who created the haircut that launched Twiggy's career. His own client list grew to include Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Mick Jagger, Joanna Lumley, and Twiggy herself. For Lumley he designed the "Purdey" bowl cut worn in The New Avengers in 1976, one of the most referenced haircuts of that decade.
The commercial decision that defined his legacy came later. In 1988, Frieda and American haircare executive Gail Federici launched Frizz-Ease, a serum built on a simple thesis: the gap between what a salon could do and what most people could achieve at home was not about technique but about formulation. If the right product existed, anyone could approximate a professional result. The timing was right, the product worked, and the brand expanded to include Sheer Blonde and other lines. By 2002, Kao Corporation, the Japanese consumer goods group, paid a reported £260 million for the John Frieda Professional Hair Care business.
John Frieda, one of the most influential and wonderful mentors in my life, the kindest man, has sadly passed away.
He continued to run his salons after the Kao sale, with the Mayfair flagship remaining open under the team he had built. Cetera Lamb, the salon's creative director, said: "For 50 years, he led our wonderful salon." The business and the brand are now separate: Kao operates the product range; the salons carry the name and the team.
From the Trade to the Shelf
Frieda was candid about how he got into hairdressing. He told The Standard: "I became a hairdresser for all the wrong reasons, to get out of studying." His father owned a salon in Ealing; he worked there part-time as a teenager. That informal entry into a craft most people inherited or trained for formally gave him an outsider's instinct about what clients actually wanted, as opposed to what the trade assumed they needed.
The product business was the result of that instinct applied at scale. Celebrity access opened doors (a stylist who worked on Princess Diana's hair had legitimacy no advertising campaign could buy), but the product had to work on its own for the brand to reach a mass market. Frizz-Ease did. The £150 million net worth estimated by The Sunday Times in 2025 reflected the compounding returns of that early bet.
The Personal Record
Frieda was first married to Scottish singer Lulu in 1977. The marriage, which produced a son, Jordan, ended in 1991. He later married Frances Avery Agnelli. His stepdaughter Asia Frieda posted on social media: "Sadly my J has passed away. Today we lost the best man to ever exist."
John Frieda is survived by his wife and four children. His salon in Mayfair remains open.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site. We have no affiliation with John Frieda, Kao Corporation, or any party named in this piece.
Sources & further reading
- LADbible: "Legendary celebrity hairstylist John Frieda dies aged 75," Claire Reid, November 4, 2026
- AOL/Mirror: "Celebrity hairstylist John Frieda dies aged 75 as tributes paid to 'true icon'," Jasmine Allday, November 4, 2026
- Wikipedia: John Frieda
- Wikimedia Commons: Princess Diana, 1997, John Mathew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Wikimedia Commons: Lulu at Sound007 RAH, 2022, Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0
