- April 3, 2025
“I never thought I was going to win it,” says Maria Dowling, reflecting on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at Beautyworld Middle East 2024. Despite a career filled with numerous awards and accolades over two decades, the Dubai-based hair colorist and stylist continues to be humbled by the recognition from her peers. “Each award is memorable, and each award is amazing and I’m grateful. But this is like the icing on top of the cake, isn’t it?” she asks. In this interview, Maria reflects on her journey, sharing invaluable lessons and cherished memories from her remarkable career.
“It’s a really funny story…” Maria begins to share her memories of what first drew her to the hair industry back when she was little. “When I was 11, my aunt would get me to blow-dry her hair. At 11. Who lets an 11-year-old do their hair?” she giggles. “So, I would take my mom's little brush and her hairdryer, and I'd go to my aunt, and then the neighbor saw it, and then she was like, oh, do you think you could blow-dry my hair? So once a week I would blow-dry their hair and get my money for it”.
Year after another, Maria’s little escapade turned into a summer job, one she didn’t quite enjoy at first, as her dream job required a different kind of uniform. “I always, all through my life, I wanted to be a policewoman. I think it must have been, now analyzing it, I think what it was the authority, you know? The respect of other people.”
And that, she earned. The summer after, 19-year-old Maria found herself in London, interviewing for a hairdresser’s job. “I remember arriving at the salon and looking in the window in the night and thinking, oh my God, that's massive. That's a massive salon,” she recalls. “Three days later I started, there was 25 staff. So, I went in and six months later I became assistant manager, and a year later I became manager.”
Despite earlier doubt, Maria knew then she was on the right track. “I never regretted not being a policewoman, I don't know what I was thinking. To be a policewoman, I would run a mile. Like if anyone raised their voice, I don't like conflict, I don't like anything like that, I'd be gone. If there was fighting, I'd be gone,” she says with laughter.
So what makes a young hairdresser determined to succeed? Certainly, there were mentors and early influences that shaped Maria’s journey. “We had really iconic people,” she says. “The iconic people for me were people like Daniel Galvin, Jo Hansford, they were all in the salons together. They all worked together. There was Errol Douglas, Joshua Galvin, and the younger generation coming along was Lisa Shepherd and Beverly Cobella, and they were really, like, you looked up to them, iconic hairdressers. They were brilliant and they stood out. It was as if there was a shine, a bulb over their head.”
Maria doesn’t feel this aura exists anymore in today’s industry. She credits Vidal Sassoon for the creative grounds he created for most of those artists to shine, most of them within the same space. “People often say to me, why have you only got one salon? That's All I ever wanted. I only ever wanted one salon, because most of the people I admired had one salon.”
With that mentality, in 2002, Mariadowling Salon was born. “My whole thing was I wanted a salon that just dealt with color. I didn't want a salon that dealt with nails or beauty or facials or eyebrows,” she explains. “I wanted to be different. I wanted it just to be hair cutting and coloring. And when I opened first, I was the first salon that was color only.”
To be a colorist, and to excel in the process, requires a certain set of skills. For Maria, experimenting with color wasn’t always an easy task. It was through trial and error that the industry grew, and she grew with it. In certain cases, new technology revolutionized the process in ways her and her peers could never expect. “OLAPLEX for example, allowed us to produce colors that we wouldn’t have been able to do in the past, because of hair condition. Now for me it’s not a choice, you are having OLAPLEX because it just allows us as colorists to push the boundaries that we couldn’t have done before,” she says.
Specialization was not the only thing that set Maria’s salon apart back then, she recalls a different scene in the hair and beauty industry. “It was easier to stand out back then, it was easier to make a difference. I mean, customer service was easier. If you had a nice personality, you smiled a lot and you gave great hair, you were winning,” she says. “There were less salons back then, so it was easier to stand out. But the good thing is, is that the fact that I'm still there, that's what shows that something worked”.
But according to Maria, it takes a little more today than what used to be a stellar effort, to make it in the salon business. “We have now become baristas, you know what I mean? It's like, what? The girls were saying, yeah, we're going to have to introduce a different latte. And the clients love it, by the way. Then, we had to introduce different kind of cookies, so for Christmas we had oatmeal cookies, and you know? It’s true, we're like a coffee shop now.”
All those ‘extras’ are a minor detail to keep the clients happy. For Maria, what makes her customers feel at home, is recognition. “I am blessed that a lot of the customers, we've had for a long time. We've had families that have been coming for a long time. We're onto third generation,” she says. “People have come, and people have tried other places, and then they'll come back and say, you know, I got there and I missed my head massage, and I missed (Shin) talking to me, and it’s a bit of a drive now, but you know what, it's worthwhile.”
Soon after she got the recognition she wanted in return, Maria took her next step by establishing the House of Maria Dowling, in 2005. The reasoning? “We opened up because you know what, I couldn't get any decent hairbrushes,” she explains. “Hairdryers we could get here, but good brushes you couldn't get.”
Simply put, that is how HMD’s first product was born. “I got so frustrated by this whole thing that I met with people who made brushes. I basically gave them four brushes. I would go buy brushes and then come back and I can't work the handle. It would either be sore on my wrist or it was the wrong shape, or the brush was too heavy. My whole look was that glamorous bouncy look, so I liked to put loads of hairbrushes in the hair. At one stage, at any stage, I could have maybe 20 brushes in the hair. So they had to be light,” she elaborates. “So, I gave them elements that I wanted from the hair brush and the bristles, the length of the brushes, and then they came back with a hairbrush for me.”
The House of Maria Dowling became a distributor of a number of brushes, and soon after, hair irons followed and then came the curling irons and the ball kept rolling. “Everything that I did, when I put my name to something, I just didn't go and pick something out and put my name on it. No, I didn't. I worked on it for different elements that made mine different,” says Maria.
Today, HMD in partnership with I plus Q - a Thailand-based house of aromatherapy, develops customized products for hotels and spas and goes beyond the initial concept of being a distributor of haircare tools. Exploring this side of business gave both Maria and her former husband and current business partner, an endeavor set on creating natural products that offer something new and distinct to customers.
Lately, a face detox clay that’s been one of the brand’s highest selling products, pushed Maria to take her next step into the world of natural hair serums. “I kept saying to the team, you’ve got a good face detox, which makes my skin come out beautifully after. I need the same thing for hair. I need the same thing that’s going to take off the dust, the dirt and the overload of products,” she says. Following a long process of research, tests and development, Hair & Scalp Clay was born.
Maria continues to work closely with her partners on creating and testing more hair products that focus on natural ingredients, following the release of her latest item from the range. “In the long run, we’re talking ten years down the line, if I pull away from Mariadowling, then I might spend more time in the HMD side, I do love that area. All the essential oils, or the smells, when I go to the office I feel like, of my god, I feel like I’m in a spa.”
Until then, Maria’s passion for hair and beauty continues to grow, and along with it, her appreciation for her community grows with it. “The hairdressing industry in Dubai as a whole, is filled with wonderful people that I’ve worked with over the years, and the support that comes from everybody, and like-minded hairdressers, just to have that community, that’s the amazing thing, and that’s what keeps everyone going as well.”