Goodbye, Hong Kong: Kim Robinson, ‘God-level’ celebrity hairstylist, is ready to close up shop

With his salon a victim of redevelopment, hairstylist to the stars Kim Robinson has decided he should quit while he’s ahead. He reflects on his ups and downs

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Kim Robinson at his home in Clear Water Bay in Hong Kong. With his Chater House salon having fallen victim to redevelopment, the celebrity hairstylist has decided the universe is hinting he should quit while he’s ahead. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 7:45am, 27 Aug 2023Updated: 9:49am, 23 Sep 2023

In December 2022, the hairstylist Kim Robinson received a bald notification from property developer Hongkong Land advising that the lease on his Chater House salon in Hong Kong’s Central business district, where he has been based for two decades, would not be renewed in 2023.

Robinson had known for two years that Chater House was to be redeveloped, but he was shocked to learn that he wasn’t part of the grand plan, and as of yesterday, August 26, he has vacated the premises.

He says he only discovered that Sotheby’s auction house would be taking over two floors when he read about it in South China Morning Post on December 15.

After a period of mental adjustment, he decided to interpret this chop in another, more meaningful, way. Really, it was a message from the universe: you’ve had your time, now it’s over.

Hairdresser Kim Robinson and singer Rita Ora. Photo: Kim Robinson

Robinson, who is Australian, arrived in Hong Kong in 1976, aged 19, and has been in the city, with a few brief interruptions, ever since. And in that time, as he often likes to say, he has had his hands on the heads of some of the world’s most beautiful, and discerning, women – Catherine Deneuve, Diana, Princess of Wales, Anita Mui Yim-fong, Josephine Siao Fong-fong.

If you ask what these celebrities were actually like, he cries, “Gorgeous!” The word is so associated with him that in 2015 he brought out a book called Go Get Gorgeous.