Her photographs, and the standard they are held to

Because the lady in the photograph has a life that has nothing to do with this one. There are careers here, degrees half finished, and families who know nothing about the West End on a Thursday. Softening the face is not decoration and it is not a trick to hide a flaw: it is the single condition on which she agreed to appear on this list at all, and the house treats it as unnegotiable. Take the softening away and most of the women on these pages would simply not be here.

No lady is listed from photographs sent in. She comes in, her identity document is examined, her age is confirmed as over eighteen, and her pictures are set beside her face in daylight. If a picture flatters beyond what the room shows, it does not go on the card. The card is written afterwards, never before. That sitting is what stands behind her portraits, precisely because the softening means you cannot do the checking yourself.

Glamour and lifestyle photography: dressed, composed, the sort a style magazine prints, nothing that could not be open on a screen in a hotel bar. There is no nudity anywhere on this site and there never will be, which is a decision about what kind of house this is rather than a legal calculation. Hair, height, build and bearing are hers exactly as they are; only the face is softened.

Allowed: exposure, white balance, contrast, a crop, the agreed softening of the face, and the removal of a passing blemish that will be gone in a week. Refused: reshaping a body, slimming a waist, altering a face, changing an apparent age, swapping a background for somewhere she has never been. A picture that needs the second list is simply retaken.

No image from this site may be copied, saved, reposted or run through a reverse image search, and no lady here may be photographed, filmed or recorded during a booking without her written consent. Trying to work out who she is, or pointing a camera at her, ends the evening on the spot with the whole fee kept, exactly as the terms set out. Nobody's degree, nobody's job and nobody's family is collateral for an hour of company.

Pictures are reviewed when a lady changes her hair, her colour or her look, and at least seasonally regardless. A set that has drifted from the woman is replaced rather than explained away. Ask the host when a particular set was last confirmed and you will get the month, not a reassurance.

Then you owe nothing. Say so at the door, let her leave, and tell the host: the booking is cancelled. Hair, height and build are all unretouched for exactly this reason, so a genuine mismatch is obvious even with the face softened. It has not happened here, and the procedure exists precisely so that the promise costs us something if it ever does. Nobody should be arguing on a corridor in W1D at midnight.

A lady chooses which portraits are published and may have any of them removed at any time, without giving a reason. Nothing is published without her written consent, and the same consent covers her file and her bio. When she stops working with the door her pictures come down and are deleted, never kept back for reuse.