Who was just sticking up for fetish & S&M fashion...I can't remember....?????? Glad to be ahead of the TIMES. tra la la la la r/o.....
Rubber Maids
By WILLIAM NORWICH
While fall fashion's most commercial news is that everything ladylike is all the rage, there are other sides to the season's story, other voices, other boons. For instance, latex and rubber wear are begging for attention, a sort of rebel yell. From subtle to ''genius'' suggestions in the collections of Julien Macdonald, Helmut Lang and Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga to more overt displays in skirts, tops and thongs by John Galliano for Christian Dior, it is latex here, latex there, S&M lite everywhere.
Do fashion people have their fingers on the pulse, or are they, bless their pointed little heads, just being silly -- again?
Something aroused this particular fetish. Maybe it was Annie Leibovitz's photograph of Cameron Diaz, accessorizing a black Gaultier suit with red rubber surgical gloves, in Vogue that got everyone thinking. Maybe it was a disease like SARS that prompted the jet set to seek, through fashion, a second, protective skin. Or perhaps it was the emerging cult of Gaelyn and Cianfarani, young designers whose clothes include pieces made from recycled rubber.
Maybe it is the continued influence on fashion of ''The Matrix,'' rekindled by the release of its sequel, ''The Matrix Reloaded,'' with its style message amplified, no doubt, by revelations about the personal life of one of its directors, Larry Wachowski, who recently left his wife of nine years to pursue a relationship with the dominatrix who accompanied him to the Cannes Film Festival.
Or maybe we can pin the blame on Thierry Mugler.
A lot of the fashion tip in the current collections is an homage to Mugler's 1980's and 90's designs. Fashion, Mugler wrote in ''Fashion Fetish Fantasy,'' is ''wonderful and very cruel . . . A very demanding mistress.''
As Mugler knows well, the line between fashion and fetish is easy to blur; all it takes is a credit card and a design team gone shopping.
Sam Hill, a young woman who manages a fashionable fetish boutique called DeMask, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, said, ''I got a feeling last year when our rubber leggings turned up underneath some chiffon skirts in a fashion story in W that fashion people would soon be all over us.''
Along with the Baroness's Elegant and Provocative Latex Clothing, sold online or by catalog, and So Hip It Hurts, Molly McGee's establishment in San Francisco, DeMask is a leading purveyor of latex, rubber wear and patent leather outfits.
''We got a huge response from all over after the W story,'' Sam continued. '''These leggings are so shiny,''' she said, imitating enthusiastic customers. ''But when I explained that they are much warmer than usual leggings, and hard to get on, people become a little less inclined.'' Sam shrugged. ''As usual, fashion people are like lost sheep looking for direction.''
Rubber, you see, must be obeyed.
In fact, to fully take advantage of it, you must apply a coating of powder or some kind of silicone-type lotion. A favorite concoction of many is Cult, made by Eros, although Patricia Field, in the recently circulated pamphlet ''Modern Girl's Guide: Everyday Uses for K-Y,'' recommends K-Y for shimmying into a latex tube top. And because you will sweat up a storm, you have to watch what you eat. A little red pepper seeping through your pores will discolor an outfit.
Also, long nails and bling-bling jewels can tear latex, cigarettes melt it, copper stains it. Do not use oil-based lotions on your skin, even perfume, or else the latex will disintegrate. (Cult is water-based.) After a night of sweating, rubber must be washed, but no soap. Just water. Last but not least, according to the baroness's helpful Web site, avoid wearing latex in the sun, or ''it will chalk or turn white.''
Although some folks are into draping themselves in rubber capes and grand old mackintoshes, rubber is usually fetishized because it creates a very binding second skin; a cat suit, say, that warms the body and makes it feel as if it is changing shape while, at the same time, it appears to others that you are naked, a veritable Barbie or Ken doll al fresco, with a taut complexion the color of Kool-Aid.
In other words, rubber is not Mother's sable, Mabel. It is high maintenance. ''Rubber him up,'' Sam told Jimmy Grillo, her co-worker. Me? Well, maybe next year. Sure, I was fascinated by DeMask's wares, but just looking today.
Almost everything on the rubber racks was constructed with glue. There were electric-colored minis, admirals' jackets, ball gowns (about $500, instead of $5,000 from Oscar de la Renta), nurses' uniforms and short shorts that would feel like loving hands across an arid prairie, to name a few items.
''The fetish for rubber,'' Sam said, ''starts in men from infancy. Maybe Mother wore rubber gloves to change your diaper?''
(Mental note: in the spirit of love-all-tell-all, try to remember Mother changing diapers.)
I asked Jimmy why they were not dressed in latex today.
He smiled. A bit of neighborly New York sadness in his eyes. ''I've got junior-high-school kids yelling at the sex-shop store all day,'' he explained. ''It is a little hard to show some authority in an inflatable suit.''
I admired an extravagant cat suit with dozens of buckles (about $1,500).
''Yes,'' he said, ''it is decorative but also makes a full body cage'' with its straps buckled.
Jimmy thought Sears, Roebuck & Company sold the first rubber pieces in the United States. ''In the old days of handlebar mustaches, Sears sold something I think was advertised as 'A Rubber Suit for Healthy Perspiration.'''
He also suspects fashion people are rediscovering the work of the British designer John Sutcliffe, whose early futuristic, rubber-wear designs predated Mugler's. Sutcliffe edited the seminal fetish lifestyle gazette AtomAge and designed some of Emma Peel's shiniest things for the TV series ''The Avengers.'' As publisher, he fought valiantly with censors to defend his magazine, which, according to an Internet posting by Constance Slater, founder of Dressing for Pleasure, ''instructed people on safety measures, when experiencing their fetishes.'' Sutcliffe's ''battle was endless,'' she wrote, ''and he finally succumbed one Sunday while working at his office desk.''
Jimmy directed my attention to a shiny dominatrix-transvestite cat suit. It was extremely precise, like a uniform. ''Loneliness is the one thing no one lies about,'' the historian Paul Fussell wrote. ''And, in severe cases, a uniform seems the only available antidote.''
I petted the cat suit.
''You have your inflatable hips, your inflatable breasts that round out,'' Jimmy said. ''People who like bondage really like the feeling of being bound and restricted. With inflatables, you're really going to feel the pressure around every inch.'' He added, ''I would love to fill this up with helium and crash the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.'' Jimmy laughed. ''Of course, the only thing is, it is hard to conceal the air valve.''
Yes, the valve would never do in fashion terms.
''It is a question of, What do you want your rubber for,'' Sam said. ''Mudlucking in the fields? Nightclubbing? To have sex in?''
Jimmy said: ''The difference between fetish and fashion is that people in the fetish community are moved to action by the clothes. In fashion, it is just a trend. It isn't going to be there next spring. But we will be.''
So, gentle readers, in what do you wish to be bound this fall? Nice Chanel suits? Dior's S&M lite? Or the real rubber deal?
William Norwich is the entertaining editor of The New York Times Magazine.
**smooch**
Rubber Maids
By WILLIAM NORWICH
While fall fashion's most commercial news is that everything ladylike is all the rage, there are other sides to the season's story, other voices, other boons. For instance, latex and rubber wear are begging for attention, a sort of rebel yell. From subtle to ''genius'' suggestions in the collections of Julien Macdonald, Helmut Lang and Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga to more overt displays in skirts, tops and thongs by John Galliano for Christian Dior, it is latex here, latex there, S&M lite everywhere.
Do fashion people have their fingers on the pulse, or are they, bless their pointed little heads, just being silly -- again?
Something aroused this particular fetish. Maybe it was Annie Leibovitz's photograph of Cameron Diaz, accessorizing a black Gaultier suit with red rubber surgical gloves, in Vogue that got everyone thinking. Maybe it was a disease like SARS that prompted the jet set to seek, through fashion, a second, protective skin. Or perhaps it was the emerging cult of Gaelyn and Cianfarani, young designers whose clothes include pieces made from recycled rubber.
Maybe it is the continued influence on fashion of ''The Matrix,'' rekindled by the release of its sequel, ''The Matrix Reloaded,'' with its style message amplified, no doubt, by revelations about the personal life of one of its directors, Larry Wachowski, who recently left his wife of nine years to pursue a relationship with the dominatrix who accompanied him to the Cannes Film Festival.
Or maybe we can pin the blame on Thierry Mugler.
A lot of the fashion tip in the current collections is an homage to Mugler's 1980's and 90's designs. Fashion, Mugler wrote in ''Fashion Fetish Fantasy,'' is ''wonderful and very cruel . . . A very demanding mistress.''
As Mugler knows well, the line between fashion and fetish is easy to blur; all it takes is a credit card and a design team gone shopping.
Sam Hill, a young woman who manages a fashionable fetish boutique called DeMask, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, said, ''I got a feeling last year when our rubber leggings turned up underneath some chiffon skirts in a fashion story in W that fashion people would soon be all over us.''
Along with the Baroness's Elegant and Provocative Latex Clothing, sold online or by catalog, and So Hip It Hurts, Molly McGee's establishment in San Francisco, DeMask is a leading purveyor of latex, rubber wear and patent leather outfits.
''We got a huge response from all over after the W story,'' Sam continued. '''These leggings are so shiny,''' she said, imitating enthusiastic customers. ''But when I explained that they are much warmer than usual leggings, and hard to get on, people become a little less inclined.'' Sam shrugged. ''As usual, fashion people are like lost sheep looking for direction.''
Rubber, you see, must be obeyed.
In fact, to fully take advantage of it, you must apply a coating of powder or some kind of silicone-type lotion. A favorite concoction of many is Cult, made by Eros, although Patricia Field, in the recently circulated pamphlet ''Modern Girl's Guide: Everyday Uses for K-Y,'' recommends K-Y for shimmying into a latex tube top. And because you will sweat up a storm, you have to watch what you eat. A little red pepper seeping through your pores will discolor an outfit.
Also, long nails and bling-bling jewels can tear latex, cigarettes melt it, copper stains it. Do not use oil-based lotions on your skin, even perfume, or else the latex will disintegrate. (Cult is water-based.) After a night of sweating, rubber must be washed, but no soap. Just water. Last but not least, according to the baroness's helpful Web site, avoid wearing latex in the sun, or ''it will chalk or turn white.''
Although some folks are into draping themselves in rubber capes and grand old mackintoshes, rubber is usually fetishized because it creates a very binding second skin; a cat suit, say, that warms the body and makes it feel as if it is changing shape while, at the same time, it appears to others that you are naked, a veritable Barbie or Ken doll al fresco, with a taut complexion the color of Kool-Aid.
In other words, rubber is not Mother's sable, Mabel. It is high maintenance. ''Rubber him up,'' Sam told Jimmy Grillo, her co-worker. Me? Well, maybe next year. Sure, I was fascinated by DeMask's wares, but just looking today.
Almost everything on the rubber racks was constructed with glue. There were electric-colored minis, admirals' jackets, ball gowns (about $500, instead of $5,000 from Oscar de la Renta), nurses' uniforms and short shorts that would feel like loving hands across an arid prairie, to name a few items.
''The fetish for rubber,'' Sam said, ''starts in men from infancy. Maybe Mother wore rubber gloves to change your diaper?''
(Mental note: in the spirit of love-all-tell-all, try to remember Mother changing diapers.)
I asked Jimmy why they were not dressed in latex today.
He smiled. A bit of neighborly New York sadness in his eyes. ''I've got junior-high-school kids yelling at the sex-shop store all day,'' he explained. ''It is a little hard to show some authority in an inflatable suit.''
I admired an extravagant cat suit with dozens of buckles (about $1,500).
''Yes,'' he said, ''it is decorative but also makes a full body cage'' with its straps buckled.
Jimmy thought Sears, Roebuck & Company sold the first rubber pieces in the United States. ''In the old days of handlebar mustaches, Sears sold something I think was advertised as 'A Rubber Suit for Healthy Perspiration.'''
He also suspects fashion people are rediscovering the work of the British designer John Sutcliffe, whose early futuristic, rubber-wear designs predated Mugler's. Sutcliffe edited the seminal fetish lifestyle gazette AtomAge and designed some of Emma Peel's shiniest things for the TV series ''The Avengers.'' As publisher, he fought valiantly with censors to defend his magazine, which, according to an Internet posting by Constance Slater, founder of Dressing for Pleasure, ''instructed people on safety measures, when experiencing their fetishes.'' Sutcliffe's ''battle was endless,'' she wrote, ''and he finally succumbed one Sunday while working at his office desk.''
Jimmy directed my attention to a shiny dominatrix-transvestite cat suit. It was extremely precise, like a uniform. ''Loneliness is the one thing no one lies about,'' the historian Paul Fussell wrote. ''And, in severe cases, a uniform seems the only available antidote.''
I petted the cat suit.
''You have your inflatable hips, your inflatable breasts that round out,'' Jimmy said. ''People who like bondage really like the feeling of being bound and restricted. With inflatables, you're really going to feel the pressure around every inch.'' He added, ''I would love to fill this up with helium and crash the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.'' Jimmy laughed. ''Of course, the only thing is, it is hard to conceal the air valve.''
Yes, the valve would never do in fashion terms.
''It is a question of, What do you want your rubber for,'' Sam said. ''Mudlucking in the fields? Nightclubbing? To have sex in?''
Jimmy said: ''The difference between fetish and fashion is that people in the fetish community are moved to action by the clothes. In fashion, it is just a trend. It isn't going to be there next spring. But we will be.''
So, gentle readers, in what do you wish to be bound this fall? Nice Chanel suits? Dior's S&M lite? Or the real rubber deal?
William Norwich is the entertaining editor of The New York Times Magazine.
**smooch**
because it would make me think too much of a prostitute.
)))))
i remember the W with natalia V in pink rubber leggings w/ beleciaga coat -it was hot 
its a very vulgar trend
