A unisex salon in Wimbledon have further defended their decision to cancel a nail appointment for a gender-fluid customer.

Andrea Di Giovanni, 26, said Style Studio called them an hour before their manicure appointment on May 19.

The 26-year-old claims that after hearing their voice, the salon worker proclaimed they were 'a man' and ended the call.

Posting on Twitter, Andrea wrote: "I’m absolutely disgusted. This nail Salon Style Studio in South Wimbledon called me to cancel the appointment because they don’t do nails on man.

Andrea added: "When she first called up and asked me directly 'Are you a man or a woman?', I was puzzled, because that question asked with that intention felt transphobic anyway.

"Once she heard my voice, she went 'Oh, so you're a man', and hung up the phone.

"I was shocked - what just happened? But I felt like I had to say something, so I called them out on Twitter and Instagram.

"Best part is that I identify as gender fluid, so I'm also a woman."

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Salon Director Maria told the Wimbledon Times that the cancellation was due to the beautician's own religious beliefs.

She said: "As a Muslim woman she is not allowed to touch another male under any circumstances.

"It would not be out of place to mention that the same way Andrea has stated on all the social media platforms that there must be equal treatment towards non-binary or transgender individuals, I strongly believe that the beautician has the same right in relation to her religion.

"Furthermore, we only have one beautician at the salon at the moment, due to the lockdown and Covid situation."

Maria went onto say the salon originally called Andre to see if the appointment could be brought forward and that "nobody hung up the phone."

Maria continued: "The call was answered by a person with a ‘male voice’, the beautician therefore asked to check who the appointment was for.

"She did not ask Andrea (as they claim) ‘are you a man or a woman’, the question was ‘I’m sorry, is this appointment for yourself?’.

The salon director went onto say that they apologised to Andrea and explained that they only provide beauty services to females, despite being a unisex hair salon.

"At this stage not having seen the person on the other side of the line, the beautician could not in any way discriminate the client on the basis of being transgender or non-binary," said Maria.

"As a Muslim lady, my beautician is not even familiar with terms ‘transgender’ or ‘non-binary’, due to her religious beliefs and lifestyle."

However, Andrea believes that the salon is using their beautician’s religion to "dodge accountability".

"She was shifting the blame to the religion of her employee – and it’d still be discrimination. Religion doesn’t exempt somebody from discriminating," said Andrea on Twitter.

"If she’d [Maria] called me and told me about the situation, apologised and said, 'how can we find a way around this', it still would have been bad but I wouldn’t have gone full throttle.

"I just wanted a manicure, for f***’s sake."

The Twitter thread has since been shared far and wide with hundreds of comments in support of Andrea.

But the salon says that the incident has been "taken out of proportion".

Maria added: "I am actually quite shocked and outraged that this situation had been taken out of context at such great level and has been turned into an issue of discrimination against transgender and non-binary community, when this fact is irrelevant to the whole situation in question. 

"We are only a small local business, and we care about all our clients and try our very best to provide the services which make them happy.

"We do, however, have own owns rules, policies and beliefs as a business and myself as an employer.

"We never had any intention to offend anybody during the course of business, which is now over 6 years, and especially have never been accused of discrimination of any kind."

Wimbledon Times have contacted TreatWell for comment to see whether they will respond to calls urging the salon to be removed from its website.