Louche woman

For more than a year the twisted Soul Sister Sue Kreitzman and Caroline Smith are hosting the "Monty Pythoniesque night Louche Women 

"A  wickedly funny club night and growing community that addresses the issues facing older women. Through events, poetry, music, performance and discussion, Louche Women makes the experiences and opinions of older women visible in a provocative and entertaining way." http://louchewomen.com/about/

I AM Louche, "disreputable or sordid in rakish or appealing way", lacking respectability in character or behavior or appearance.

 My style is dubious, sometimes bad taste borderline. I adorn myself with gaudy colours and maximalist kitsch and showy accessories. 

By Anthony Lycett 

Even the artist Gavin Turk said my jewellery "are very weird but in a good way 

I am messy, unpredictable, uncontrollable  the kind of girl boys don't like because I am not so sweet and quiet.  The kind of girl that scare men but fascinate them at the same time.  I defy people who want to put a label on me, even if somehow I still belong to a category determined by precise socio-economical background.  

I am not always politically correct while trying to stay polite and unconventional as long as I don't infringe the freedom of another (unfortunately some narrow minded people will take eccentric look as a visual aggression and I can do nothing for this hopeless sad grey people).  

The kind of girl that never follow Women press patronising advice or girly "youtouber" or mainstream fashion blogger  and don't feel  guilty about it. 

In Middle Age times,  I am the kind of woman people would have taken for a witch and   have burn alive. 

I could never been part of the popular girls in school, not the pretty one, or the sporty one…but   I am proud to be part of the louche tribe.  "I am one of us" a glorious freak.  

At the Lights of Soho picture by Peter Wallis 

Because the Night happen in the Poetry place in the heart of Soho, and it was for the "Sex edition" I decided to create a Sexy Soho dress that I style with my favourite Piers Atkinson hat attempting to revive the old Soho spirit slowly but surely by Property developer and the closing down of world renown clubs like Madame Jojo.  

Sulphurous Soho know as the red light district, with its outdated sex shop, colourful neon lights . The world of endless parties, glorious drags, sequins and glitters.  

The nipple tassels remind the burlesque scene of Soho. They are quite an ironic statement, diverting the erotic function as they are usually sticked on the bare skin and not stitched on a dress. 

A glorious casual encounter, the flamboyant Alexandra Bravoure, dress in Alexander MacQueen style  matching with her Royal Poodle headpiece just to "have a tea", the kind of character you can only meet in Soho 

At Louche Women with Deidre Macken came specially from Dublin to celebrate her birthday in London. 

She asked me to make a headpiece, she has an amazing vintage shop Lycy's Lounge  in Dublin that I wish to visit one day. 

The louchest of the psychedelic babe, the amazing performer and artist Gaffy Gaffiero. 

With one of the fellow my Louche women, one of her most faithful and glorious member, the inimitable wearable art maker Diane Goldie. Sometimes we meet with Sue after Spitafields market.  This crazy bunch of colourful ladies make a tourist attraction for curious onlookers  and  9 to 5 City worker on their lunch break.  

This kimono is designed between tradition and modernity.  It is a traditional silk japanese fabric  with printed flowers and birds that I embroidered over with beads.  But it also refer to the kawaii and hyper japan of manga words with  hand-stitched moshi monsters.   

by Anthony Lycett 

I styled it with my colourful rubber dress that I worn for the Vaslpar advert. 

To immortalise this psychedelic pagan priestess look, with Anthony Lycett,we  decide to shoot it in front of a stone circle in Dartmoor in Devon, famous for its  mysterious stones bronze age. 

This series of pictures is part of a larger scale photographic project, a collaboration with the photographer Anthony Lycett taking picture of my costumes in natural British landscape all over UK, maybe will be turned into an exhibition… stay tuned! 

By Anthony Lycett 

As in experimented tourists from London, we were naively thinking we can just find the stone circle, but Dartmoor National Park is huge and we didn't have a map.  We walked for 6 hours around the Heath carrying photographic equipment and 15kilo of costumes. After coming back to the visitor centre, we found some stones but disappointedly small so we decided to take the picture in front of a Neolithic former settlement.  

By Anthony Lycett