AN industrial tribunal in London will decide early next year whether a Muslim cocktail waitress was discriminated against when she was told to don a revealing red dress for work.
Fata Lemes, left, and the 'indecent' dress modelled by Swedish waitress Amanda Bjursten
According to this report, Fata Lemes, 33 – originally from Bosnia – told the Central London Employment Tribunal last week:
It was indecent. If you put this dress on, you might as well be naked. Everything finishes in the middle at the chest. It is open at the front and back. I did not want men looking at my body.
She added:
I was brought up a Muslim, and am not used to wearing sexually attractive clothes.
Lemes was working at Mayfair’s Rocket club and restaurant when she was told to wear the red dress instead of her loose-fitting black clothes. She alleged bosses ran Rocket “like a sex club” and allowed clients to think waitresses “could be treated as prostitutes”.
She tried on the outfit and found it was “physically revealing and openly sexual”. She said it made her look like a sex club hostess.
Lemes refused to wear it and claims she was immediately fired. She is claiming £20,000 for injury to feelings and lost earnings from the restaurant group Spring & Greene, which owns the Rocket chain.
The restaurant produced photos for the tribunal of one of its waitresses, Amanda Bjursten, wearing the dress in the bar, and she modelled it at the tribunal hearing.
Despite her underwear being partially visible through the figure-hugging outfit in one of the photos, Swede Ms Bjursten said she was “completely comfortable” wearing it.
The bar’s manager Luca Scanu denied the dress was designed to boost custom and tips from male clients by being “sexually inviting”. Italian Mr Scanu said:
If you have curves, it will show them, but I can see the curves of a woman’s body if she is wearing trousers.
Miss Lemes’s lawyer Joe Sykes asked the restaurant’s general manager Danila Bodei:
The reason for choosing the colour red was to indicate that the waitresses were sexually available, wasn’t it?
She replied:
No, it was just the colour to match the bar.
The company claims Miss Lemes resigned in May of her own accord.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
December 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Here we go again. We allow foreigners to settle in our country and then they start whinging about our laws and lifestyle. This is another of those spurious and vexatious claims brought about by money grabbing Lawyers and their money grabbing clients. If Ms Lemes does not like the “uniform†then she should find a job that doesn’t have a dress code. Furthermore, would not Ms Lemes have been interviewed and seen what the other staff were wearing before taking the job? Common sense? Not if you are muslim.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
“The reason for choosing the colour red was to indicate that the waitresses were sexually available, wasn’t it”
In what world does that question even make sense? Does wearing red mean you want to tell people you are sexually available? Is this a code that everyone knows? It’s absurd. The whole thing is absurd. Here is a Muslim working in a bar. And I thought Islam was against alcohol!
December 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
‘The reason for choosing the colour red was to indicate that the waitresses were sexually available, wasn’t it?’
So that’s why santa’s suit is red. Gosh.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Since Ms Lemes was working in a bar serving alcohol, and wasn’t wearing a hijab, she wasn’t by any means a practising Muslim.
As soon as she mentioned Islam in her lawsuit, she destroyed her own case – she should have stuck to the sexual harrassment angle.
December 24th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Try re-writing the headline as feminist waitress claims damages over “sexist” dress. Her religion isn’t actually particularly relevant here. Yes, she mentions it in passing – perhaps she thinks it helps her case – but many women would feel uncomfortable being sexually harrassed by customers in such a dress. Give her a break. She isn’t exactly wearing a burqa, is she?
December 24th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
What a complete tosser that woman is.
December 24th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I’ve come across the notion from some fundamentalist Christians that red clothing is an advertisement of sexual availability. So it isn’t just a Muslim notion. Still stupid, though.
I can see some women objecting to wearing that dress, though. I would think they could have found a less revealing dress option that still fit with the theme of the bar.
December 24th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Get your tits out for the lads!
December 25th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Meh, that dress is modest compared to what they make the waitresses at “Hooters” wear. As to her lawsuit I think it’s BS. She wasn’t asked to do anything the other employees weren’t, nor was she asked to do anything illegal. If she got bent out of shape over the uniform that’s her fault, not theirs. She needed to find another place to work rather than act like a fool.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Being against any uniformity, paticularly sexist uniformity that this woman has been fired over; I sympathise with her for losing her job but her religion has nothing to do with it. If she was the muslim she claimed she was, she wouldn’t be able to work in the first place.
December 26th, 2008 at 11:30 am
send her back to Bosnia
December 30th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Sex or religion, the fact remains that if you can’t stand the job requirements, get out of the job.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
You have taken this story almost straight from the Daily Mail – always a dodgy source.
In fact Fata is not religious at all (she doesn’t practice ay faith, although her parents happen to be Muslim) and her claim was based on sex discrimination, NOT religious discrimination, as well as the fact that the wearing of the dress was NOT part of her original contract. It was a straightforward abuse of an employment contract, which noone, male or female should have to put up with.
Fata Lemes (the woman who was sacked) has blogged about it here:
http://fatafatafata.blogspot.com/
June 15th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
She's a scrounging cow who should be deported for wasting public money.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:48 am
The uniform changed after she started the job