Seven months after its debut, Red Bank lingerie-and-swimwear boutique Femme by Ashley held a sizzling fashion show in its Broad Street space Thursday night.
Models sashayed and posed among attendees as owner Ashley Dupré shared a laugh with guests, below. (Click to enlarge)
Supporters packed Teak Restaurant for the second edition of Go Naked & Check Yourself on Sunday. (Photos by Rebecca Desfosse.)
By: REBECCA DESFOSSE
Sugarush cupcakes and Sweetest Sin have done it again. Teak Restaurant was nearly busting at the seams for the second sold-out Go Naked and Check Yourself cancer fundraiser and awareness raiser Sunday night.
Waitresses passed around food, cocktails, and minicupcakes. Lingerie and underwear models, in various states of undress, sold raffle tickets. But partiers werent there for the models, of course: they were there to learn how to check themselves for detectable cancers of the skin, testicles and breasts.
A cleaning crew and electricians were at work at Femme By Ashley Monday afternoon after all the merchandise and drapery had been removed. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After just five weeks in business, Femme by Ashley, the Red Bank lingerie and swimwear store owned by former tabloid queen Ashley DuPre, was closed this weekend as a result of a small electrical fire.
A transformer connected to the lighting system malfunctioned last Thursday morning, Dupré’s boyfriend, T.J. Earle, tells redbankgreen.
A screen grab of Ashley Dupré’s final sex-and-relationship advice column, which ran Saturday. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Moving on to what she calls “the next chapter in my life,” Ashley Dupré the high-priced escort in New York’s 2008 ‘Luv Guv’ scandal has pulled the plug on her career as a New York Post sex-and-relationship advice columnist in order to focus on her new Red Bank lingerie and swimwear store, she says.
In her swan-song column, published on Saturday, Dupré thanked readers “for helping me find my path in life” while at the same time plugging her Broad Street boutique, Femme by Ashley.
Ashley DuPré embarked on a new life Monday with the opening of Femme by Ashley, her Red Bank swimwear and lingerie boutique, below. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Can a Jersey Girl whose work as a 22-year-old prostitute helped derail a political career in spectacular fashion return home and remake herself as a small-town retailer?
Four years after her high-priced hotel romps with Eliot Spitzer dynamited his tenure as governor of New York and made her infamous, Ashley Dupré says she turned a page Monday with the opening of Femme by Ashley, a lingerie and swimwear boutique on the choicest block in downtown Red Bank.
The shop, Dupré told redbankgreen in an exclusive interview, “is almost like the beginning of the rest of my life.
“I made a bunch of mistakes when I was younger, and I feel like, for the first time in my life, I’m growing into an adult, and I’m really excited about that,” she said.
Ashley Goral will manage Ice, which plans to open soon at 12 Monmouth Street. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A primo spot on the sunny side of Monmouth Street in Red Bank is about to get some ice.
Most recently home to Soapmarket, which vacated in January to become an online-only retailer, 12 Monmouth is being outfitted for Ice Costume Jewelry, which hopes to open in just a couple of weeks, store manager Ashely Goral tells redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn.
Would-be Red Bank bra and bikini merchant Ashley Dupré in a file photo.
By JOHN T. WARD
Ashley Dupré, the former high-priced courtesan whose romps with Eliot Spitzer torpedoed his career as New York’s governor, plans to open a lingerie and swimwear store in Red Bank, redbankgreen has learned.
Operating under the name Femme by Ashley, Dupré has signed a lease at 15 Broad Street, a stylish storefront recently vacated by children’s boutique Lavish Kids, a source close to Dupré confirms.
Sweetest Sin Boutique hosted a Valentine’s lingerie show at Taste in Red Bank Thursday night, and photographer Peter Lindner got the hot pix for redbankgreen. To enlarge the photo display, start it, then click the embiggen symbol in the lower right corner. To return to redbankgreen, hit your escape key.
We’ve said it before: the ‘Hip City/Hippest Town in New Jersey’ designation for Red Bank has got to go. It’s so rusty it creaks. Even the folks at Red Bank RiverCenter steer clear of it in marketing the town, they tell us.
Ah, but hips, well… they can stay. After all, they’ve only just arrived, in a sense, and they’re doing their, um, parts to help give the town some renewed sizzle as a destination for fashion-conscious women.
How recently? redbankgreen readers may recall that it was just over a year ago that Red Bank had its first-ever lingerie fashion show, or the first one in recent memory, at least. Sponsored by lingerie retailer Sweetest Sin Boutique and held at the now-shuttered Ashes Cigar Club, the packed-house event brought a flash of sexy to a downtown that’s better known for family-themed doings.
A bustier-clad model gets an appreciative welcome to kick off the show. (Click to enlarge)
Aficionados of sexy women’s undergarments packed the second floor of the soon-to-be-renamed (and already smoke-free) Ashes Cigar Club Wednesday night for what may have been Red Bank’s first-ever lingerie fashion show.
The free event, hosted by Sweetest Sin Boutique on White Street, saw a handful of models in g-strings and little else strutting to throbbing music along a velvet-roped catwalk.
Want to see more? Of course you do. Read on.
If the above headline, or any two parts of it, pretty much describes your idea of heaven, you might want to make your way to downtown Red Bank Wednesday evening.
Sweetest Sin Boutique, the new lingerie store that’s already raised the temperature on White Street by a few degrees, will host a ‘Naughty or Nice Lingerie Fashion Show’ at at Ashes Cigar Bar on Broad Street.
We’re talking leggy models in nothing more than “holiday-themed” bras and panties think red, think ermine strutting down a runaway, and maybe even the staircase.
We’re also talking $1 “mistletoe kisses” available from “some cute girls friends of ours and maybe some of the models,” says boutique owner Angie Courtney.
Angie Courtney in her new shop on White Street. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
An ideal night for Angie Courtney usually goes something like this: Hitting the town for dinner, drinks, and then a couple hours of lingerie shopping. And she suspects that’s the case for a lot of women in the Red Bank area.
And so Courtney is bringing sexy back to Red Bank.
The 28-year-old maven of unmentionables this week opened Sweetest Sin Boutique, a seller of lingerie and other items she hopes will prove popular with lace-loving shoppers in the area.
“People are walking in and they’re excited,” said Courtney, of Aberdeen. “They’re like, ‘We’ve been watching, we’ve been waiting for you to open.'”
