Harness & Mane’s Creative Director Gunel Kelly took the reigns at London Fashion Week this season as she headed up the hair team at the London Queer Fashion Show.
The perfect partnership saw Harness & Mane team up with the London Queer Fashion Show to celebrate the unbridled joy of wearing clothes to express all the facets of a person’s identity. Like Harness & Mane, the LQFS shared their values of style with no boundaries and expression in all its forms, offering a safe place for the capital’s vibrant queer community to fashion their own identity a safe place for all to express their true self.
With over 100 models and 10 designers taking part in the show, Gunel and the team faced a heavy task.
Gunel commented: “There were 10 designers in total and each one of them had their own briefs for what type of styling and looks they were looking for to showcase their designs best. It was a real mixed bag of requests and so much fun to work on for the team, as the work was so varied. From sleek erotic club kid with purple clips for accessories, to clean ponytails with geometrical lines and dramatic looking up-dos for some designers. A couple of favourite looks created by my talented team were eco-glam-punk look, which just screamed drama. A well-sculptured look on an Afro textured hair and a look I personally created for the show opening singer Stars, which resembled a Disney character with big blue hair. She had an amazing black latex crown with chain draping around her forehead attached on the top. It suited her warm personality so well and made her look an absolute queen!”
The varied looks created by Gunel and her team changed for each designer, models walking for Returning Queen were sleek but with drama. Their outfits stood out a lot and were quite demonic, so Gunel created a sleek on the top with exaggerated messy buns at the neck, coming out from the sides. Models walking for Olli Hull required bold statement hair with horns, spikes, and Keith Flint style wings. Models walking for Zekaryas Solomon required simple chicque ponytails with clear visible geometrical lines. There was also Kim Kardashian inspired chique sleek back requests along with wet looks and eco-glam-pink styles for some of the designers.
What was in Gunel’s toolkit to create the looks? Gunel shared her top tips for achieving the trends: “Most of the eco-glam-punk looks were achieved with heavy prep first to create that solid base. Pureology volume mousse and Guts 10 were key to achieve these looks. Then Iron shape 11 by Redken sprayed throughout then hair was tonged with medium to small size tongs and put up into the required style. With the slicked back wet looks, the trick with these is to not to make the models look like they’ve just come out from the shower. We prepped the hair with volumising mousse by Pureology first. Then blow dried the shape in, volumous and all to the back. Then run a well gelled wide toothed comb through the top of the hair gently and mixed gel and water in a bottle and spritzing a couple of times to finish off the look. For the rest of the looks – there was plenty of tonging with heat protective shape holding spray Iron Shape 11 by Redken, which created a good base for a lot of looks. One little magic product which we used for a lot for spikes and wings was Glued Blasting Freeze Spray by Schwarzkopf, it was a total saviour on the day.”
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