On the complex relationship of fashion and fetish

As a fashion writer, I have always been interested  in the nature of consumerist desire – and how this kind of desire is different from the one we associate with fetish clothing. I wrote about this distinction, latex gloves, Cottweiler, and fetish as an alternative technology for perception. Enjoy and thank you for your support as always <3 

My first ever piece of latex clothing was a pair of Lady Lucie Latex black opera gloves. I ordered them because they seemed like an easy entry point into fetishwear. They seemed pretty versatile and could potentially fit into various situations. I applied the logic we usually use for shopping for regular clothes: “At least I could wear them to an event with a nice tailored jacket”. After all, long latex gloves do appear in fashion editorials pretty often, both regardless and thanks to their fetish connotation.

When I unwrapped the gloves from tissue paper, they were matte and lightly powdered. I love that about latex garments: when you take them out of the package they’re always matte, looking like what they essentially are – rubber. It requires time and human contact to get it to that shiny, sleek, sexual look – it needs some polish, as much as it needs to absorb your body warmth. Trying the gloves on, I could sense that they have an energy that is different from regular clothes. It got me thinking about the separation between fetish clothes and fashion – especially in the era when the two appear so intertwined in pop culture.

Latex is perfect for a conversation about fetish clothing. In the mainstream imagination, it’s linked to pro-dommes and kink parties, to the dark, the forbidden, and the uncomfortable. Everybody knows that latex is tight, hard to put on, sweaty, fragile, and requires special care. Latex is a signifier of the world where people might bizarrely enjoy these things – and maybe some other things which are not yet known. This mystical aura is perfectly captured by a Moscow-based latex fetishist @dazzled_troglodite in one of her Instagram posts.

“The origin of this diptych is very peculiar. I was going to visit an apartment in the central area of Moscow where a lot of my creative buddies live. That day I got a pair of latex gloves in my backpack, so I intended to let a girl who had earlier said that she was very intrigued by latex try it. But it happened so that girl was late that day and my longtime buddy Maria met me at the door and asked why I came. And than:

⠀- Well, she is not here now. Soooo, LET ME TRY IT! Do you only have gloves? Owwww, what a shame! I saw pictures with a full suit, why you did not bring it?

Yeah, that's how fearless and curious Maria was that day.

She jumped in gloves and in a blink of an eye she became the center of attention of the whole apartment and a lot of people came to see and ... touch. Most of them were hypnotized by latex and started to flood me with questions, but I wanted to take a picture, as I traditionally do”.

I love the idea of someone being almost like a dealer of the fetish consciousness, an entry point into the underground world – and how the object has the potential to completely transform the room.

I have worked as a fashion writer for over ten years now. I have always been interested in the nature of our obsession with certain garments, in the excitement, amusement and love we feel for bags, jackets, and trainers. Fashion trades in physical garments as much as it does in aspirations, stories, and symbols. The subversion and fetishisation of branding were one at the core of The Real Thing, the show I curated at Fashion Space Gallery in 2020. As someone who spent years looking into consumerist desire, I am particularly interested in how this kind of desire is different from the one we associate with fetish clothing.

If I step out of my role as a fashion writer and step into my kink experience, the difference between fashion and fetish is pretty obvious. A fetish garment is something that transforms the way you exist as a body. Fetish garment is a source of an erotic experience. It is external to you until it blends with you in the moment you put it on – and then you become one, creating a new sexual identity. Wearable fetish items are most likely practical: a source of tactile pleasure, a tool, a piece of equipment. Fetish garments always contain all the potential hot situations they could be in, all the turn-ons, fantasies and possibilities. I bought my first latex dress after reading a scene in Carol Queen’s “The Leather Daddy and the Femme” where the narrator is getting pissed on by three of her friends wearing head-to-toe red latex, a sensible option because everything washes off easily. I closed the book and went straight to browsing latex dresses – for the potentiality of the hot idea.

Fetish clothing is linked not only to fantasies but also to sensory memories. It acquires more meaning with experiences. From a theoretical turn on it becomes a physical trigger for arousal – a closed circuit of mental and physical pleasure with no end or beginning. After you’ve used latex gloves a few times in scenes, they don’t seem so appropriate to wear in public for a vanilla occasion anymore. The smell, the shine, the sweat, the sound of pulling them up – it’s become a part of personal intimate history.

Historically and culturally, the idea of fetish clothing is connected to certain garments and materials: latex, leather, high heels, or boots. This is what most writers looking for a connection between fetish and fashion usually pick up on – details like straps, chains, corsets, and hoods. But fetish clothing is much more than a set of objects – it’s an alternative technology for perception.

Elizabeth Wilson’s essay Notes on Fashion as Fetish published in Vestoj is perhaps the closest to thinking of a fetish as a generalised concept that works across culture – although the idea here is more connected to Marxism than sex. “Fetishism is a form of false consciousness: inanimate objects are endowed with a power they cannot objectively have,” the writer explains.  Fetish, basically, is not so much about what it is – but rather what this power does to the wearer in the particular place, time and situation.

The work of London-based label Cottweiler is a good example of engaging with the meaning of fetish beneath the surface – as something connected to expressive power, the beauty of a precious object, niche subcultures, and closed communities. Their Fall-Winted 2016 collection research incorporated fetish videos of trainers submerged in mud which they have sourced on YouTube and specialist web groups. Generally, their work treads carefully on the line between exciting, subversive, and slightly deviant – reflecting the ambiguity of desires surrounding tracksuits and trainers.

“As with their watersports-themed “Ideal Standard” presentation for AW14, some of Cottweiler’s work either directly references fetish or just easily sits next to sportswear fetishists’ own imagery – the kind where scally lads are getting down in trackies and trainers,” wrote Daryoush Haj-Najafi in his profile of the label for Dazed in 2016. “But mostly for Dainty and Cottrell fetish doesn’t imply hardcore. Their images are cleaner, sharper, bolder, and always less explicit than that. This is a sort of branding genius – after all, marketing departments are forever making subliminal and not-so-subliminal efforts to connect with our more vanilla sexual desires. Uniquely, Cottweiler’s images can sometimes work both in the sorts of browser tabs we curate in the hope the world will recognise our creative genius, and the sort of the browser tabs we probably close right after cumming. In a world where our commodity fetishism is encouraged, but our sexual fetishes are still shamed, Cottweiler deserve extra credit for helping to resolve the sort of cognitive dissonances that can really fuck you up”.

Even though fetish is often perceived as something on the fringe of culture, it is often intertwined with our daily existence and objects which surround us. Trainers are a well-known example. Denim, workwear, and rubber macs all have a history of carrying meanings that inspired their own sexual subcultures.

Fetish is always about a personal experience – but also about engaging with stories that are bigger than us. Licking stiletto heels as fucking with the femmeness of the goddess. Tracksuit bottoms as a signifier of masculinity which is threatening, irresistible, and unattainable all at once. Fetish clothing is an insight into how our minds are wired, a roadmap to complex personal histories embedded into the clothes we wear. It’s also a way of owning, undoing or reclaiming these histories. In this way, fetish clothing is critical engagement – apart from the precious moments when it just turns us on a lot.

Images: 

1. Comme des Garçons Rouge advert by Jordan Hemingway

2. Lady Lucie latex gloves by Anya Gorkova

3. AW Brand Latex by Lanee Bird 

4. Archival image, source unknown

5. Archival image of a Cottweiler tracksuit