Ashley Lucas started a business that brings together a community, supports human rights, and has some fun with fashion. These are three things Proxy can majorly get behind, so we thought it would be fun to hear her thoughts on Boston, her business, and the local fashion scene.

 Proxy: Tell us about Diffuse 5. What is it and why did you start it?

Ashley: The social and political landscape in Boston is such that the Lesbian or Queer community – depending on how you identify – doesn’t have any venues dedicated to them. Women don’t have to go to that bar with the shady sign that doesn’t really say anything with no windows, because most of them feel comfortable enough to go to a straight bar and meet their friends there. All of a sudden Boston has started losing the bars that were dedicated to these women and has started having these one off events, everything from night life dance scene to activist events. And it was very difficult to figure out what was going on when, what was starting, etc.

We decided that we wanted to pull all of the events together and create a place where the community could go and figure out what was going on. We could give non-profits and other organizations that were having events more exposure, so that they had a better chance of succeeding. And I’m a firm believer that competition breeds better things, whether it’s an event or an organization. So, create a little more competition in Boston around that. We started with the events, and people got really interested in what we were doing. I was writing a blog occasionally and then more and more people started asking me if they could contribute content to the site. 

Then we hosted a fashion show called Found: Revealing Queer Fashion. We did that because I realized there were all these cool companies that were creating fashion, or were creating a friendly environment for the community that weren’t getting a lot of exposure. So we paired those companies with our demographic so that they could find each other. 

We’d like to branch out to other cities, that’s the next big step. Right now we’re talking to different developers to see how much it would cost to build the site out to do that.

Proxy: So how long has the site been up?

Ashley: It launched March 2010, so almost two years, so it’s been up for awhile and out numbers are growing and it’s getting much bigger.

Proxy: What cities are you looking at next?

Ashley: There are fifteen cities in the U.S. that have the largest gay and lesbian populations, and the ones that will likely target next will be New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco.  Los Angeles has two other sites that are similar to ours so we’ll probably steer clear of it for awhile.

It’s interesting because some people see us as this cool, hip, night life event site, and other people see us as this warm, feel-good, community promotion site. It’s interesting when you talk to different people how they view the site, and myself and other team members and the brand.

In terms of team make up there are ten of us at this point. Myself and one other person essentially work anywhere between 30 and 60 hours a week. Although I’ve actually taken a vacation, which is the first in three years, which is pretty incredible. And then we have six writers, one intern who does event management, and another woman who does all of our video work. I feel like at this point I do less work than anyone else, which is not actually true, but it’s definitely a big, full team of individuals. We do everything from news to fashion, which actually people really like.

Proxy: Are there many venues for queer fashion?

Ashley: We’ve actually been considering going in that direction.  I have this major thing for suspenders and bow-ties, I think they need to make a major comeback. And I would never wear them, but I think everyone else should. So I googled “suspenders” today and our blog post – actually one that I wrote – came up on the first page. And then you google things like ‘dapper’ or other words that I would associate with the Lesbian or Queer community and there isn’t a lot of content there. A lot of the sites that generate content around fashion go so niche that I think it’s difficult for them to get any major traffic. So dapperQ is one, but I think that a lot of times they break it down based on identity. Are you super feminine? Are you more of a butch? And then a lot of times by race and ethnicity, so you’ll find these microsites, but nothing big that covers everything.

Proxy: In the interviews I’ve done with fashion bloggers a lot of them have commented that when you look at all of the blog pictures, everyone is wearing the same thing and it’s not that interesting. If Queer fashion were to jump in, it would be a different voice in the monotone of the fashion world. 

Ashley: Yeah, the looks are so incredibly different because there’s this huge gender spectrum so I think the queer community adds so much interesting fashion to Boston, and I wanted to give props to that as well.