Toni: My Story

The "Hairdresser to the World" tells his incredible life story

Toni Mascolo was a one-year-old toddler in the sleepy Italian town of Scafati, near Pompeii, when the Allied landings at Salerno brought war to his family's doorstep. More than 70 years later, he is the distinguished head of Toni&Guy, a Knight of the Italian Republic, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and a Papal Knight. What happened in the years between forms the core of his fascinating autobiography. The author became the head of his hard-working, yet often hard-up, Italian hairdressing family when his mother died in1962. Toni's father, who had brought the whole family to live in London in the 1950s, was devastated by his wife's death, and it was left to Toni and his younger brother Guy to feed and care for their younger brothers. The first Toni&Guy salon opened in London in 1963 and now, after more than half a century of extraordinary expansion, there are more than 500 salons all over the globe. In this lively, informative, sometimes tragic, and often moving memoir, Toni Mascolo explains how he became "Hairdresser to the World," and chairman and chief executive of one of the most famous and recognizable brands in countless countries.