Toni: My Story: The Rags-to-Riches Story of Toni&Guy, ‘Hairdresser to the World’ by Toni Mascolo

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.