What do you get when you combine a taste for fetish with a talent for hair styling? Since 2019, London’s answer has been Harness & Mane, a hair salon run by creative director Gunel Kelly and her husband Hughie.

Winner of Hair Magazine’s Colour Expert 2022 Award and a finalist in more than half a dozen other awards this year alone, master hair stylist and colourist Gunel has been working in the hairdressing industry since 2005.

She has also been involved in the London fetish scene for many years, and has integrated her interests in fetish and alternative subcultures into her approach to hairdressing in a most original way.

She regularly works on alternative fashion shoots and events in the UK and beyond, with credits that have included Torture Garden, the London Queer Fashion Show and the German Fetish Ball in Berlin.

But you don’t need to have attended such events to experience the way Gunel combines hairdressing and kink. The Harness & Mane salon itself — located in Walthamstow E17 — is a vibrant testament to her successful fusion of these two distinct areas of creativity.

A hint of what’s within is provided by the window display — currently a Figure of A rope harness displayed on a dressmaker’s dummy — even before you enter the premises.

Fetish artefacts and outfits on display

Once inside you quickly notice that the interior boasts not just the customary paraphernalia associated with an upmarket hair salon, but also a range of fetish artefacts, outfits and objets that are both for decoration and sale.

These range from more Figure of A rope harnesses and other larger items by Kerris Spencer and Broke Boutique, to smaller pieces laid out on trad-Japanese-inspired black wooden fitments. There’s also a ‘shibari wall’ room-divider created by rope-bondage guru Nawashi Murakawa, separating the salon’s work area from the washers.

Venture further in, to the salon’s rear kitchen area, and you’ll be confronted by a wall-sized mural by fetish artist Inky Layla, featuring a model suspended by her legs and arms in a shibari pose.

And then there’s also the cage in the bathroom.

“It’s where we send our disobedient customers,” jokes Gunel. But it’s also a focal point for models visiting the salon to shoot content, and has been used for other activities on various occasions too.

Gunel says the vibe at Harness & Mane attracts “a buzzing clientele of fetish models and designers from the alternative scene”, as well as “people who are either trans or newly transitioning” and “professionals looking for a premium hair appointment in a luxurious yet unique environment”.

The decor alone is more than enough to establish the salon’s fetish-fashion cred (while not being too scary for straighter customers). But Harness & Mane goes further, by also holding fairly regular events for the alt community on weekday evenings or Sunday afternoons.

“We aim to be a hub for the fetish/alternative community,” Gunel explains. “And with that in mind we regularly use our space to hold fetish life-drawing classes, pop-up shops for fetish designers and art exhibitions for fetish artists.”

Michelle Mildenhall latex art exhibition

MICHELLE with Stonewall Sisters original. (Full-size image: gallery below; photo: Tony Mitchell)

I attended the most recent of these on Sunday November 6, when Gunel and Hughie hosted the opening party for Servitude, a three-month Harness & Mane exhibition of latex art by Michelle Mildenhall, the top exponent of the genre.

The St Leonards-based artist and I are old pals from the fetish social scene of yore, and her work has been featured on The Fetishistas more than a few times over the years.

So the launch of her latest London exhibition was the perfect excuse for us to reconnect, and for me to get my first in-person experience of the Harness & Mane premises.