THE owner of a vegan hair salon wants to raise the self-esteem of her clients – by getting rid of mirrors.

Kelly Vowles, who runs Pixal-Rose Hair Design, will introduce a double workstation with no mirrors to stop customers from staring at themselves for lengthy periods.

The 37-year-old said: “Some people come to the salon for four to five hours, having their hair colour done, and what we noticed is while they are staring at the mirror, they pick faults in themselves. For example, they focus on their wrinkles, or on how tired they look.

“But by taking the mirror away on some of the workstations people won’t be staring at themselves for so long and what we are hoping is that it will take that kind of edge off of it.

She added: “This concept comes from a salon I worked at in Bristol called Tame the Mane.”

It was after watching documentaries about people having plastic surgery that Kelly decided to take action.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure on people to look a certain way,” she said. “We do see it sometimes from some of our ladies in the salon, they want to get some change about themselves.

“Sometimes it’s because of something they’ve seen on social media, or someone has made a comment to them about the way they look. “

But for those who wish to keep an eye out on their hairstyle, there are four additional workstations with traditional mirror set-up.

Kelly said: “We just want to turn that around because in addition to the no-mirror workstation, we are going to be introducing a course about wellbeing as well, so people can come to the salon and learn how to treat themselves better.”

The salon in Rodbourne will offer a space for customers to work remotely.

It opened in 2018 and Kelly says it is Swindon's only vegan salon.

Kelly said: “People are more aware of veganism and why people are vegan – and a lot of brands are choosing to go that way anyway.

"It’s a lot easier now to be able to adapt that.”

Kelly is hosting a fundraising event for the Animal Justice Project on Friday, February 21 at 6pm and will be unveiling the new workstation at the same time.

She added: “We were asked by the Animal Justice Project to become ambassador to them.

"It’s an organisation we support whole heartedly. They work to raise issues around animal cruelty.

“We don’t have any products that have been tested on animals at all.”

The hair salon is also about to open a training academy which will follow the ethos of the business by remaining vegan.

Kelly said: “We will be starting off with offering workshops, there are aimed at hairdressers and non-hairdressers.

"We've already run some workshops. For example, we teach people how to do their own hair at home for nights out."