Eutrusca
22-06-2006, 14:44
COMMENTARY: Mmmmm! LEATHER! :D
Talk about "out of the closet!" Just a very few years ago, even wearing the long leather coat and high-heeled boots Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was recently seen in would have caused a stir. Now ... well, just read the article. :D
Kinky Chic Extends Its Dominance (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22leather.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin)
By GUY TREBAY
Published: June 22, 2006
CARTOON SUPERMAN never amounted to more than that for most people. But for a select group, early encounters with the Man of Steel wearing a molded bodysuit, knee boots and a shiny cape helped set the course of an erotic life. "Batman and Robin and Superman were all really exciting," said John Weis, the chairman of the Folsom Street East street fair, an annual event that kicked off Gay Pride Week in New York on Sunday. "Batman was always tied up or in some peril, and I thought that was really great."
There was a time when people whose erotic rituals ran to whips and chains and latex and highly complex protocols of dominance and submission were confined to the cultural shadows. But that was before Madonna turned bondage into a concert party trick, before the Gap ran ads with a tongue-in-cheek S-M tagline ("Everybody in leather!"), before Altoids and Svedka vodka purloined imagery from "Venus in Furs" for their ad campaigns and well before Victoria's Secret mainstreamed the bondage pinup queen Bettie Page.
Fashion designers were the early adopters of this kinky style: talents as unalike as Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Versace have nipped into the fetish closet for inspiration.
"The whole leather fetish look has been around since at least the 1920's," said Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "But from the moment it started to come out of the closet following the sexual and gay liberation movements, it was already influencing popular culture, with guys walking down Castro Street in leather and people wearing it in friendly little swingers clubs in suburbia."
IT was at one point in the 1970's, Ms. Steele said, that clothes resembling fetish wear began being merchandised even by mainstream retailers like Montgomery Ward. When, more recently, the French designer Thierry Mugler was called on to create costumes for Cirque du Soleil's naughty but family-friendly Las Vegas show, "Zumanity," his first design was for a cross-dressing M. C. tricked out in dominatrix leather and vertiginous bondage shoes. It almost goes without saying that Mr. Mugler was only going where comic book artists had been before.
"So much of this world used to be swept into dark corners or alleys or basements," Mr. Weis said. Images and acts, he added, that might once have been shocking now barely merit a yawn.
Remember Condoleezza Rice in that long black coat and black high-heeled boots? he asked. "What is that but the secretary of state dressed like a pro dominatrix?" (Lest anyone imagine that the point has been missed, Simon & Schuster plans to publish a book titled "The Corporate Dominatrix: Role Play Your Way to the Board Room" next year.)
But for the 90-degree heat, Ms. Rice would have looked at home stalking along 28th Street in her black coat and heels. In fact, the one fairgoer who stood out on Sunday was a man in flip-flops, Madras trousers and a jaunty straw hat. For the rest of the crowd, the uniform code was indeed, often literally, uniform, with at least one man dressed as an officer of the California Highway Patrol and many others looking a lot like the "Springtime for Hitler" chorus line from "The Producers."
"It's really just fashion, no different from shopping in Barneys or Bergdorf's," said Gregory Bunch, a salesman at the Chelsea fetish shop, the Noose. "You buy key pieces that are the best you can afford and that provide the most utility. Then you accessorize."
The key pieces this summer, Mr. Bunch said, are leather shorts and a harness. Actually, those are the key pieces every year. "It's too hot now for chaps," said Mr. Bunch, who bears a tattoo on his right bicep that reads SLAVE. "If shorts are too hot, you can always wear a studded leather codpiece jock."
Of course you can. Or you can wear, as many did, a latex singlet or bleach-mottled skinhead denims or neoprene jerkins reminiscent of Nicolas Ghesquiere's designs for Balenciaga, or close-cropped mohawks or abraded jeans left half-open or dog collars and leather hoods with zippered mouth and eyeholes and with little puppy ears attached.
"It's a way to express the feelings and emotions of your inner canine," explained Steve Birko, who calls himself Puppy Diesel when dabbling in the burgeoning sphere of what in kink circles is called human animal training, an elaborate form of role play in which the end point is basically sit and stay.
[ Read the rest of this two-page article. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22leather.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th) ]
Talk about "out of the closet!" Just a very few years ago, even wearing the long leather coat and high-heeled boots Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was recently seen in would have caused a stir. Now ... well, just read the article. :D
Kinky Chic Extends Its Dominance (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22leather.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin)
By GUY TREBAY
Published: June 22, 2006
CARTOON SUPERMAN never amounted to more than that for most people. But for a select group, early encounters with the Man of Steel wearing a molded bodysuit, knee boots and a shiny cape helped set the course of an erotic life. "Batman and Robin and Superman were all really exciting," said John Weis, the chairman of the Folsom Street East street fair, an annual event that kicked off Gay Pride Week in New York on Sunday. "Batman was always tied up or in some peril, and I thought that was really great."
There was a time when people whose erotic rituals ran to whips and chains and latex and highly complex protocols of dominance and submission were confined to the cultural shadows. But that was before Madonna turned bondage into a concert party trick, before the Gap ran ads with a tongue-in-cheek S-M tagline ("Everybody in leather!"), before Altoids and Svedka vodka purloined imagery from "Venus in Furs" for their ad campaigns and well before Victoria's Secret mainstreamed the bondage pinup queen Bettie Page.
Fashion designers were the early adopters of this kinky style: talents as unalike as Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Versace have nipped into the fetish closet for inspiration.
"The whole leather fetish look has been around since at least the 1920's," said Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "But from the moment it started to come out of the closet following the sexual and gay liberation movements, it was already influencing popular culture, with guys walking down Castro Street in leather and people wearing it in friendly little swingers clubs in suburbia."
IT was at one point in the 1970's, Ms. Steele said, that clothes resembling fetish wear began being merchandised even by mainstream retailers like Montgomery Ward. When, more recently, the French designer Thierry Mugler was called on to create costumes for Cirque du Soleil's naughty but family-friendly Las Vegas show, "Zumanity," his first design was for a cross-dressing M. C. tricked out in dominatrix leather and vertiginous bondage shoes. It almost goes without saying that Mr. Mugler was only going where comic book artists had been before.
"So much of this world used to be swept into dark corners or alleys or basements," Mr. Weis said. Images and acts, he added, that might once have been shocking now barely merit a yawn.
Remember Condoleezza Rice in that long black coat and black high-heeled boots? he asked. "What is that but the secretary of state dressed like a pro dominatrix?" (Lest anyone imagine that the point has been missed, Simon & Schuster plans to publish a book titled "The Corporate Dominatrix: Role Play Your Way to the Board Room" next year.)
But for the 90-degree heat, Ms. Rice would have looked at home stalking along 28th Street in her black coat and heels. In fact, the one fairgoer who stood out on Sunday was a man in flip-flops, Madras trousers and a jaunty straw hat. For the rest of the crowd, the uniform code was indeed, often literally, uniform, with at least one man dressed as an officer of the California Highway Patrol and many others looking a lot like the "Springtime for Hitler" chorus line from "The Producers."
"It's really just fashion, no different from shopping in Barneys or Bergdorf's," said Gregory Bunch, a salesman at the Chelsea fetish shop, the Noose. "You buy key pieces that are the best you can afford and that provide the most utility. Then you accessorize."
The key pieces this summer, Mr. Bunch said, are leather shorts and a harness. Actually, those are the key pieces every year. "It's too hot now for chaps," said Mr. Bunch, who bears a tattoo on his right bicep that reads SLAVE. "If shorts are too hot, you can always wear a studded leather codpiece jock."
Of course you can. Or you can wear, as many did, a latex singlet or bleach-mottled skinhead denims or neoprene jerkins reminiscent of Nicolas Ghesquiere's designs for Balenciaga, or close-cropped mohawks or abraded jeans left half-open or dog collars and leather hoods with zippered mouth and eyeholes and with little puppy ears attached.
"It's a way to express the feelings and emotions of your inner canine," explained Steve Birko, who calls himself Puppy Diesel when dabbling in the burgeoning sphere of what in kink circles is called human animal training, an elaborate form of role play in which the end point is basically sit and stay.
[ Read the rest of this two-page article. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22leather.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th) ]