A celebrity hairdresser in 1980s London, once married to the Scottish singer Lulu, he coifed clients like Princess Diana (including for her Vogue engagement portrait), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Raquel Welch, Diana Ross, Farrah Fawcett, one Rolling Stone and three out of four Beatles (John didn't do much with his hair).

But it was a tiny bottle of caramel-colored goop with the decidedly inelegant name of Frizz-Ease, launched in U.S. drugstore chains in 1991, that brought Frieda fame and fortune, and made life a lot easier for thousands of women.

"It sounds ridiculous to say Frizz-Ease changed women's lives, but it did," says Linda Wells, editor in chief of Allure magazine. "It really changed the way women approached their hair. A lot of women have frizzy hair, and I knew women who wouldn't swim, who panicked when it rained. This gave them a solution."

It also spawned hundreds of imitators. From one product, Frieda's, in 1991, there are now close to 1,000 anti-frizz products, Wells says. It's a problem that Frieda notes ruefully. "We get copied all the time," he says. "We really need to keep showing consumers what we do. It's as simple as that."