The Salon
A salon for people who never felt like salons were made for them.
RCNQ was built from a simple question: what happens when you stop designing a salon around old expectations and start designing it around people? We wanted to create somewhere that made more room for individuality — in the hair we create, the people we work with and the way an appointment can look and feel.
You don’t need to know all the right terminology, fit a particular aesthetic or decide which part of the hair industry you belong in before you walk through the door. Some people arrive knowing exactly what they want; others bring a collection of conflicting screenshots and a vague idea of how they want to feel. You bring yourself. We work from there.
“...you can expect to be transported to a whole new dimension while you’re here...”
Questioning the salon rulebook
The hair industry can be an incredible creative space, but it also comes with plenty of inherited rules — ideas around femininity and masculinity, services divided by gender, assumptions based on hair length, and an industry that hasn’t always had the knowledge or curiosity to work equally well with different hair types and textures. RCNQ exists because we think those things are worth questioning.
Our pricing is based on time rather than gender, and consultations are conversations rather than prescriptions. Our team brings together different skills, backgrounds and approaches to hair, working across razor cuts, shags, wolf cuts, creative colour, curls, textured hair, protective styling, clipper work, extensions and more.
There isn’t one RCNQ haircut, and we don’t want there to be. The aim isn’t to make everybody fit our style — it’s to have the skill, curiosity and creativity to help you find yours. We don’t want to tell you what your hair should be. We want to help you figure out what you want it to become.
One Space. More Possibilities
RCNQ shares its home with Barber Below, our anti-barbershop. Barber Below originally existed as a separate space underneath the salon, but in 2022 we deliberately brought the two together. We wanted to remove the physical divide between salon hair and barbering, particularly for clients whose hair, identity or presentation might change without wanting the space around them to change too.
Today, both teams work alongside one another and those traditional boundaries are much less important. Razor work meets barbering. Colour meets clipper work. Long hair meets short hair. Skills, ideas and knowledge move between the team instead of staying in their traditional lanes.
It’s made the space more of what we always wanted RCNQ to be: a melting pot of creativity rather than a collection of categories.
“Whether you have curly hair, straight hair, or hair that’s somewhere in between, we’ve got you covered”
Shaped by lived experience
RCNQ and Barber Below are queer and disabled-owned, and being AuDHD-led has inevitably shaped the way we look at the industry around us. It makes us question why things are done a certain way, who those systems work for, who they might make things harder for, and whether there’s another way of approaching communication, consultations, pricing or simply being in the space.
We don’t pretend we have a perfect answer to every accessibility need, and we’re still learning. For us, inclusion isn’t about putting “everyone is welcome” on a website and considering the job finished. It means listening, adapting, developing our knowledge and continuing to look at the space we’ve created and asking who it still needs to work better for.
RCNQ has changed a lot since it began, and we hope it always will. The team evolves, our knowledge grows, the hair people want changes and the conversations around identity and accessibility continue to move forward. RCNQ isn’t supposed to be finished — it’s shaped by the people inside it.
Find RCNQ
16 Whittle Street, Manchester’s Northern Quarter, M4 1LT
Whether you already know exactly what you want or need some help figuring it out, explore the team, take a look at our prices or book a consultation.