Amsterdam. Netherlands. The Fashion Week is going on. On the ouderzijds achterburgwal (street name) in the city centre you can buy the latest couture party dress in the red light district of Amsterdam. Some of the former prostitution establishments are temporarily available for sixteen fashion designers. It’s a cultural clash of fashion and prostitution, they say.
In one shop front window a ‘women’ (rather a girl) in garish lingerie is advertising her body to passers-by and in the next front window you find one of the hippest designers the dutch fashion avantgarde has thesedays – a brave performance somehow, I must admit.
But possibly it was me who was the bravest on that day. 5 to 10 prostitutes yelled at me and some more showed me their middlefingers (no photos of that) . I guess they don’t like it when people take pictures of them… just for you guys, just for you.
window girl
| sjaak hullekes | – arnheim fashion
| mada van gaans | suddenly men are interested in fashion
| jan taminiau |
wanna go for a walk?
| redlight fashion |
Yes, I learned the hard way that photos were prohibited. I recently went to Germany (Aachen) and I walked down a strip where half naked women stood in the window. I immediatly pulled out my camera and started to attempt to take pictures (managed to get one, but it’s blurry). Suddenly, I hear the sound similiar to an animal close to death, and a short woman runs out toward me and my boyfriend (who by then had the camera.) She violently tried to take the camera from him, and I blocked her. She quickly punched me (owww) and started yelling something. When I looked around, I was surrounded by women yelling in some language…most of them were black. I yelled back that we didn’t know and that we are not from Germany and suddenly they started talking in english and asking me if I was mad. One of them even kept grabbing my hair. Then the short one punched me again…all the while, my boyfriend is trying to protect me and pushing them away. Yet, they focused on me only screaming and positioning for a fight. My boyfriend wanted to call the police, but I’m not familiar with the laws, so I didn’t know if we were also in the wrong, so I suggested leaving. After following us almost to the end of the strip, one of them even kicked me. I tried to fight them back, but my bodyguard (boyfriend) was insistent on keeping a fight from breaking out. But, I didn’t know what to do past that…to contact the embassy or what…but now, I’m researching.