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.
Why a face is softened
A companion who asks for it has a reason, and it is always the same reason. She has a working life of her own that the Society has nothing to do with, or a course she is partway through, or a family and old friends who know a woman these pages would be an unwelcome surprise to. She is on the roster on the understanding that none of them will ever find her by accident, and the Society treats that understanding as the first thing it owes her, ahead of a fuller-looking page or an easier sale.
The softening therefore takes away her identity and leaves her likeness where it is. Her build, her height, the colour of her hair, her carriage and what she wears are all shown exactly as they are, which is what the comparison below is for. Her face is the part of the evening the roster does not spend in advance.
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.
A courtesy to guests as well
There is something in the softening for you too. A companion who joins you at a hotel bar is, to everyone else in the room, simply your dinner guest, and nobody looking at this site later can put her there. Discretion that runs in both directions is worth more than either half of it alone.
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.
What a portrait here is never for
A portrait is to be looked at on the roster and nowhere else. It is not to be copied, saved, forwarded, posted on another site or service, cropped so as to isolate a softened face, or put through any reverse image search or face-matching tool. Every one of those undoes the only thing the Society undertook to keep for her, and Cressida will take it up.
The same holds in person. Setting out to establish who a companion is, pressing her for a name she has not given, or turning a camera or recorder on her ends the evening there and then under the conduct clause in the terms, the fee kept and the matter closed.
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.
Yes. Everything the softening leaves alone is what you actually recognise someone by across a lobby: height, build, hair, colouring and the way she carries herself. The face is simply the part kept for the evening itself.
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.