My friend Afira is a beautiful, powerful woman who designs beautiful, powerful outfits:

‘…Inspired by the strong, dark, archetypal woman, glamorous, passionate and heroic, from both past and present. Vamps, femme fatales and dominant women tell the stories. These clothes are designed to harness the power and sexuality within for the woman of today. The modern Amazon is our icon: clothes for the futuristic feminist.

Afira says “Strong, powerful and sexy women are my inspiration, and my customer.

They want to feel and look sexy and powerful, embracing their femininity and not imitating what it means to be powerful from a man’s perspective. They want to feel strong and powerful in what they wear, and this further enhances their confidence and interaction with others. In life, they know what they want and know how to get it, and they want to look the part when they do. They don’t dress for men, or other women, they dress for themselves.

My clothes are about her strength, a feminine strength that penetrates beyond the wearer. They are for the woman who lives the power of her word, tapping into the primal urges and the raw instinct of her nature, the passions which sustain her lust for life, embracing the full breadth of her feminine powers without society’s pressures to fit in. Balance is restored, the truth is revealed in the makeup of her being. She is committed to be all she can be. She is a woman of substance, who combines physical potency with seriousness of purpose. In her sexual identity, and in the way she constructs her domestic life, she strives to be true to herself. If she is confrontational, it is not for its own sake, but to say: “This is what I am”.

My designs are about how clothes translate and manifest onto both the wearer and the watcher, the power, control and suggestion we have on our audience. A powerful woman wants to look and feel sexy, confident and strong; I aim to enhance her position, give her a tool for self expression… a suit of armour, a flag to rally to and pursue her dreams on the battlefield…”

See more here.

Big banks haven’t always been arbiters of ethical behaviour. Quite the contrary, especially in recent years. However, it seems that HSBC have now decided to take a stand  on something – breasts. In the eyes of HSBC, profiting from cluster bombs and depleted uranium is apparently fine, but bare norks are a sin. Here’s what a friend, an artists’ model, wrote on her Facebook wall this morning:

“The bank [HSBC] wont let me have any kind of account with them because I get naked for a living… how very odd. I find it very sad that people have to lie about their careers to be able to do it legitimately. All I want to be able to do is pay tax on what I earn. Very odd system. It was quite amusing seeing the bank man’s reaction as he asked to look at my website. He spent rather a long time looking through the albums whilst trying to figure out what I do for a living… [the problem is] definitely the nakedness. If it was mainstream it wouldn’t be a problem, he explained to me… I was really shocked and surprised, as it is legal what I do. I don’t actually understand the problem. I don’t want him to bend the rules for me anyway. I am just surprised those rules exist, which they clearly do. After that I asked if I could have a normal account for my vanilla job. They wouldn’t let me do that either because I may use my normal account to put my modelling money into. It was a shock, it made me realise perhaps I live in a bubble world of perverts? Is this really the narrow mindedness of the real world…?”

Her work isn’t porn. Far from it. On her portfolio website, the booking section explicitly (yes, I know) states that: “art nude, fetish and bondage work does not include open leg shots under any condition” What, then was HSBC’s objection? Is this a blanket policy across HSBC, or just a branch manager who insists on taking a detailed look at a woman’s bare boob photos before deciding whether or not to allow them an account? Is corporate morality so skewed that breasts are now more offensive than bombs?

I haven’t followed this up or contacted HSBC for a comment, and the model concerned would prefer to remain anonymous for now. However, if you’re a journalist or similar, and would like to investigate further, contact me and I can put you in touch with her.