Ray Bowler felt that he's been missing out all his life - on women's clothing - so, to right this wrong, some years ago he tried on a few garments more traditionally associated with the female form... "Apart from the nice, little diamonte earring, I'd pass for a bloke in the street," Ray begins. His interest in women's clothing started in his twenties, "Blokes clothes are fairly dull. There's some lovely, sensuous fabrics in women's clothings. They hang off your body in a different way - they are rather delicious..."
He remembers when he first tried on women's attire, "Years ago, I was married at the time, there was one dress of my wife's I liked a great deal - and I did wear that on occasion." One part of Ray responded with "Oh! At last!" and the other part sternly told him, "You shouldn't be doing this! This isn't what men do!" Ray describes the dress as a black, sensual chiffony affair, "All the fabrics that are out of bounds for blokes, and I thought 'I feel gorgeous!' "
Ray's friends all suddenly saw a different man, "I could tell by their faces - they were delighted! It was great!" He's gone on to develop his own way of dressing, "I think of it not as dressing as a woman, just dressing as Ray. As David Bowie once said when pulled up for wearing women's clothes, "They're my clothes!"
"I'm trying to talk this away from the erotic tag it usually carries," says Ray, "I want other people out there to feel it's a legitimate part of their being and not something preserved for the bedroom."
Unlike women, Ray believes men don't love their bodies enough, and that his clothes preference is to do with thinking better of himself. "Most of my friends are women, especially Di, who's gorgeous and immensley supportive. All I want really is 'clothing rights', to show myself to be vulnerable at times and less aggressive as a bloke. If you wear something with shoulder straps, it feels enormously vulnerable."
Ray's been to clubs for cross-dressers, "It wasn't my world at all, it's all rather sad. I want to be honest about it. I want it to be part of life. I'm happy to be a bloke, but there is another side to me, that wants to get out and flaunt itself."
