about

Kathy Chau’s cross-continent career between her birth country Canada and her chosen home country Germany spans 26 years and boasts a client list as varied as the Pantone spectrum.

Kathy’s humble small town beginnings in Ontario, Canada, had her creating, drawing, and painting at a tender age. it was by pure chance, at a girlfriend’s 11th birthday party, that she began to recognize the transformational potential of beauty with her friends as her canvas and with hair and makeup styling as her magic wand.

one’s outside reflecting upon one’s inside… or perhaps one’s inside projected onto one’s outside… each directly affecting the other… how in and how out are indelibly linked… what a fascinating union it is between the hidden and the visible, what is with-in and what is with-out… and how marvelous it is that through hair and makeup, one can manipulate the mirror between these two selves and all those selves in between… Kathy was hooked!

when her Papa agreed a brief time thereafter to let her borrow one of his Nikons, her world shifted on its axis yet again… with her trusting friends, Kathy orchestrated countless “on location” photoshoots, not realizing at the time that she was developing skills not only as a hair and makeup artist but also as a creative director, stylist, and photographer. she was, simply and from the beginning, fearless and a natural within the realms of creativity and artistry.

the borders of circumstance proved even then much too narrow and confining and when she had the means, she finally spread her wings and moved to Toronto to pursue her studies in fashion. after graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Fashion Merchandising Communication from Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, Canada, Kathy was offered a position with an advertising agency exploring yet another different creative endeavor, as a graphic designer.

juggling two streams of creativity in graphics and in beauty and fashion, while diverse and interesting, would prove to last only a blip before Kathy felt compelled four years later to focus her energies solely on her career as a hair and makeup artist. since then there’s been no looking back…

over the years, Kathy’s career has afforded her the chance to flex her creative muscle in many diverse ways beyond photography, film and TV sets, including the following roles:

• guest artist for top beauty brands
• beauty expert and editorial contributor for beauty and fashion magazines
• beauty consultant for model agencies, broadcast television channels, and private clients
• beauty educator for a community outreach program aimed at teens in her hometown
• writer of a Q&A column for a beauty magazine,
• beauty stylist for galas, events, and weddings for private clients
• interim beauty editor for a beauty magazine responsible for written and creative content and commissioning and supervising creative teams for self-pitched magazine content
• personal beauty shopper

the multitude of ways in which her global expertise can be applied, coupled with the time-approved reach of her career, is a testament to Kathy’s craft as a professional hair and makeup artist. Kathy currently lives together with her partner and their son in Hamburg and continues to explore and create in and out of her box of paints, potions, tricks, and tools.