Roy Donders

About

Roy Donders from Tilburg is one of those people who seems to turn up everywhere in Dutch popular culture, and he got there by doing things his own way. He started out as a hairdresser and stylist working mainly with women from working class neighbourhoods and caravan sites, then built that into a clothing shop and a television presence. His breakthrough came with the RTL 5 reality series Roy Donders: Stylist van het Zuiden, which ran for seven seasons and pulled serious viewing figures. When he launched a line of house suits through the show, all 2,000 copies sold out in a single afternoon. He has always had one foot in music too, releasing singles as a volkszanger and even voiced Hippe Smurf in the 2017 film Smurfs: The Lost Village. Mick Jagger once name dropped him on stage at Pinkpop, asking Ron Wood in Dutch who his hairdresser was. More recently he appeared in the TLC series Roy Donders altijd wat bijzonders and took part in Expeditie Robinson, De Alleskunner VIPS, and a string of other Dutch TV projects.