The GRAZIA Guide To Dubai's Best Hair Salons Leaves Out The Building's New Neighbor

Dubai's hair salon map tells two stories at once. There's the one GRAZIA Middle East tells in its new guide to the city's 14 best addresses, and there's the one sitting a few floors away in the same building as one of its picks, a story the guide never mentions.

GRAZIA's list, compiled by writer Frankie Jabarkhyl, leans toward hotel-affiliated and Western-expat pedigree: salons tucked into the Kempinski Palm, the Metropolitan, and Marsa Al Arab, run by British and Irish stylists with international training. It's a real map of where Dubai's fashion editors and residents actually get their hair done, and it includes two of the city's more durable names. Maria Dowling, an Irish colourist nicknamed the "Queen of Colour," opened the Middle East's first dedicated colour-specialist salon in 2002 and has spent more than two decades building a client book of celebrities and fashion editors from her space in Al-Hudaiba, according to a profile in The National. Nicolas Hallak trained in Beirut, arrived in Dubai around 14 years ago running a small salon in Deira, and has since become an L'Oréal Professionnel Paris ambassador, now based in Aurora Tower in Media City.

What the guide leaves out is who else moved into Aurora Tower this year. Aalim Hakim, the Bollywood and Tollywood stylist behind the looks in "Animal," "Kalki," "War," and "Saiyaara," opened his first UAE salon at Marina Promenade in Aurora Tower in 2026, according to a report from OneArabia, drawing a high-profile launch crowd. That puts a major South Asian celebrity-stylist operation in the same building as one of GRAZIA's featured names, serving what is likely an almost entirely different clientele.

The gap points to something the guide's polish tends to smooth over: Dubai's hair scene isn't one market, it's several running side by side. Pricing tracks the same split. Data compiled by price-comparison site Expatistan shows basic men's and women's cuts running roughly AED 30 to 150, while premium and luxury salons in areas like Downtown and Business Bay charge AED 130 to 800 and up. Gulf News has reported on the other extreme: haircuts for around AED 5 in International City, serving the labourer-expat population that shares the city with the Palm Jumeirah crowd GRAZIA is writing for.

None of that undercuts what GRAZIA's guide sets out to do, which is point readers toward salons with real craft and track records. But a city where a Beirut-trained colourist and a Bollywood stylist to the stars can work floors apart, invisible to each other's clientele, is a more interesting story than any single list of the best chairs in town.