La Reine Des Coeurs @ The Eagle Inn

As the fish-woman jiggles her breasts at the cooing audience it becomes clear that the launch of La Reine Des Coeurs has been a success.

Organised by lingerie guru Louise Challinor, La Reine Des Coeurs is a lifestyle brand that aims to make women – to make everyone – feel more sexually confident.

“There’s no point in a woman buying lingerie to make herself feel better if she has low self-esteem,” says Challinor. “It won’t make her feel any sexier.”

“I want to empower people. Then I want to give them the skills to empower themselves.”

Valentine’s Day saw Challinor hosting a burlesque night at The Eagle Inn in Salford – a fitting way to launch a sexual empowerment brand. Ginger la Rouge summed up the weird but endearing atmosphere of the evening with her costumed homage to The Salmon Dance by The Chemical Brothers.

Ginger also performed a version of the classic martini glass dance. Made famous by Dita Von Teese, the act involves the dancer ending up in a giant martini glass with few, if any, of her clothes remaining on her body. It was a marvellous thing to witness.

Afterwards, Ginger discussed the workshop she’ll be running for La Reine Des Coeurs where she will be teaching the art of ‘Tease’. She explained, “I will be teaching people bits and bobs, poses and walks. Talking about body confidence a little bit. People think you have to look a certain way to be sexy and I am here to combat that.”

Her workshop will sit alongside a number of others to run regularly in Greater Manchester throughout the spring. The first will be ‘Whip Making and Cracking’, where whipteaser and comedic burlesque star Diva Hollywood will unleash the inner dominatrix of anyone willing to hand over nearly £100 (although that does include catering).  

While this may all sound a little tacky, Challinor is at pains to reassure that all her events will be ‘up market’. She says, “There is a bit of a taboo about it and actually it’s not dirty and dark – it’s beautiful.”

Beautiful is certainly a fitting way to describe the ‘Anti-Valentine’s Day’ event at The Eagle Inn. Red balloons cling to the ceiling of every room with rolled up scrolls of poetry hanging from them on ribbons. Guests are encouraged to fill out a short questionnaire and then wear the heart-shaped answer sheet on their sleeves.

Whether Challinor achieves everything she wants to with La Reine Des Coeurs remains to be seen, but if her first evening of performance is anything to go by, something sexy and empowering and, yes, beautiful may just have arrived in Manchester. Especially if what turns you on is a fish doing a striptease.