Mable Cable, resident hair colourist at North London’s gender-neutral salon Open Barbers, is known for her ability to transform hair into vibrant, multi-coloured artworks. The London based colourist started honing her skills in her early teens, using her own hair as an ever-changing canvas. “The moment I left school I bleached the whole lot and dyed it pillar-box red like Miki Berenyi from Lush,” she recalls. With 15 years of self-taught colouring experience under her belt, Cable, encouraged by Open Barbers co-founder Greygory Vass, secured an official qualification, joining their team soon after. She spoke to INFRINGE about the joy of working with her hands, and we document some of her recent looks as modelled by her partner, art director and illustrator Kate Moross.

The colour styles you create are very creative, as well as technically complicated. Are these your most requested kind of styles? Bright, creative work is what I enjoy doing most so I showcase that style in the hope that I get to do more. It seems to be working! I’m lucky that we get a lot of people coming to Open Barbers who want to experiment with their hair and therefore give me a lot of creative freedom.

What has been your favourite colour creation that you’ve collaborated with Kate on? I love the ‘Rainbow Swirl’, I used 10 colours and aimed to create a seamless blend from one to the next. From some angles it looked unreal, like it had been photoshopped. My brain couldn’t process it. The ‘Google Chrome’ hair was also good, it was borne out of a boring Saturday afternoon when Kate just told me to paint her head. I usually think a lot about the process before doing a colour, so it was great to just leap into something with no plan at all and see what happens. We created something cool and weird from the odds and ends of dye I had lying around the house.

You previously worked as a butcher. Can you tell us about that? After going to art school and floating around in unfulfilling retail jobs, what I craved was a real skill. Butchery appealed to me as it seemed like a challenge. and I knew it would raise a few eyebrows. I loved learning about meat and chatting to people about what to cook, but the early mornings weren’t for me. Butchery definitely made me realise I’m happiest when working with my hands, so being a colourist seemed like a natural progression really!