Photo Policy · How portraits are made
Photo policy: why each portrait can be taken at its word
A portrait on the roster is a statement of fact, and the Society treats it as one. The photographs show the companion herself, recently, much as she looks on an evening out.
They are glamour and lifestyle pictures. Some faces are softened at the companion's own request; none of the photographs shows nudity.
At 02:00
Lamps still lit
How each portrait is made, checked against the woman herself and, when needed, replaced.
Where each set comes from
Every set is made with the companion's agreement and approved by her, frame by frame, before it is published. The roster carries no image taken from a stock library, from another woman's portfolio or from software that invents or reshapes a person. Editing goes no further than brightness, colour and the crop, and a softened face where she has asked for one.
The comparison over coffee
The first meeting is where the portraits are tested. Cressida goes through the set with the companion sitting opposite, frame by frame, and anything that the hairdresser or the years have overtaken is dropped. Her height is taken on the day and her age from her identification, and neither is rounded to flatter anyone. Only then does a page appear on the roster.
Why some faces are softened
Several companions have lives in London that have nothing to do with the Society, and would rather the two stayed apart. Softening a face protects that. There is a courtesy to guests in it as well: a companion who joins you at a hotel bar is, to everyone else in the room, simply your dinner guest. What makes the likeness, her height, her hair, her figure and the way she carries herself, is left untouched.
When a set is looked at again
Portraits age faster than people do. When a new cut or colour, or any change a guest would notice, comes along, Cressida sees her again and brings the set up to date; until then the frames concerned are taken down. A guest who reports that a likeness has slipped starts the same process. Ask when a particular companion's photographs were last compared, and Cressida will give you the month.
Hers to withdraw
The photographs belong to the companion in every sense that matters. One word from her and a frame comes down, or the whole page does; she does not have to say why, and it happens without delay. How the Society treats your own details is another matter, set out in the privacy notice.
The result, unretouched in spirit
Glamour and lifestyle photography of the women themselves, faces softened where they prefer, and no nudity anywhere on the site.
Asked before an evening
No. What is published is everything the companion has approved, and it has been checked in person. Private pictures sent by message travel further than anyone intends, so the Society never sends them, and an offer of them from someone claiming to write for the Society is a warning sign.
Write to Cressida at once, even from the doorway. She settles it with the companion that night, and any portrait that no longer does her justice is taken down.
One message to Cressida
Write with the night you have in mind, an hour, and where you will be staying. Cressida answers in the same thread, usually within minutes, with a name and a figure.