The fashion sense for fetish

If you’ve never thought of putting on a latex jumpsuit or stretch cuissard with a razor-sharp heel, at the end of this article you might find yourself adding to your cart garments with a fetish mood. And not only because the third Friday of January is celebrated International Fetish Day (which aims to increase knowledge and awareness of erotic practices that are often stigmatized and misunderstood).

Let’s clarify it right away: if you haven’t noticed, although the fashion / fetish combo has been around for a while, BDSM has played a leading role during the latest world-class public events.

Who does not remember Kim Kardashian al Met Gala in Balenciaga, wrapped in black from head to toe? And then still spotted in total leather on the street with a covered face?

And then Madonna who, on the other hand, left open-mouthed a few weeks later showing the most classic of scenes on the stage of the Video Music Awards: a master stroke and under the Burberry trench coat a total look in S&M leather (or sadomasochistic).

The 63-year-old singer continues to show hot outfits on Instagram that recall some of her hot videos with lovers tied to bed bars, harnesses and whips. It’s not for nothing that we still remember when Sex, his book of erotic photographs, scandalized Puritan America and the whole world in the 1990s. And he also does it with Julia Fox, the woman everyone is talking about now because she is Kanye West’s new flame: for her a past as a dominatrix and services on Playboy.

And let’s not forget about Damiano dei Måneskin who at the European Music Awards, in a total Gucci look, last November nonchalantly showed off long leather gloves, over-the-knee boots, fishnet stockings, BDSM briefs and transparent top blouse.

While only a few days ago Megan Fox raised the mercury column with her sexy outfit (transparent lace bodysuit and leather pants with laces), guest at the Dolce & Gabbana Menswear Fall / Winter 2022-23 fashion show. Need anything else?

“The current return of fetish fashion is partly due to a reaction to the lockdown following the pandemic, to the control by the institutions of our controlled bodies in their every move,” he explained to the The Guardian Professor Andrew Groves who curated the exhibition in London Undercover on the mask at the time of Covid. The pandemic and the obligation to wear protections have probably raised tensions and a desire to indulge in new fantasies. A theory that was obviously heard and translated into sartorial terms by fashion system.

If we can identify in Elsa Schiaparelli the one who started the genre fashion fetish with it Skeleton Dress of 1938, created with Salvador Dalì, who reinterpreted the fetishized female anatomy with the surrealist filter, and in Vivienne Westwood, which opened in London in the 1970s Sex, her fashion boutique, where she made clothes inspired by bikers, fetishists and prostitutes, the one who consecrated fetishwear, is the Fall / Winter 1992-93 show for the collection Miss S&M Fall / Winter 1992-93 by Gianni Versace the zero point of the pret-à-porter’s interest in sadomasochistic. A riot of straps and buckles on black and gold dresses to recall an aggressive and playful sexual image, taken to the extreme by the most famous supermodels of the time.

If in the new millennium, with the red Britney Spears jumpsuit in the video of Oops I did it again, the empire of latex began, a material more and more used then on the catwalk from Valentino to Marc Jacobs, from Chanel to Dolce & Gabbana (of the latter we can remember the whip for spanking at the Fall / Winter 2007-08 show), to make it symbol of the 2000s, the Kardashian sisters thought about it.

And perhaps it is no coincidence that today, in the great Y2K comeback, this material is re-proposed; an example among all is the coordinated Balmain outfit by Kourtney and Kim for the 2020 Balenciaga show in Paris.

For the cold season 2018-19 it is even Jeremy Scott per Moschino then to put the fluorescent colors in a corner: for the Men’s show he exhibits an impeccable dominatrix wardrobe complete with leather hoods with zip, latex briefs, bib, mask and leather gloves.

Today we can’t help but think of designers like Ludovic de Saint-Sernin which has made fetishwear its aesthetic figure, while from alternative Fashion Weeks, from Tokyo to Vancouver, brands of clear sadomasochism advance inspo come DressedUndressed o Elegant Curiosities.

And eventually it comes Gucci: after playing with collars of studs and quills in the 2019 winter collection, with the latest show Love Parade Alessandro Michele brought to the stage necklaces with sex toys, various corsets, latex and chains. Even an updated version of Elsa Schiaparelli’s Peek-a-boo Hat, with clear sexual symbolism.

Is this new fashion and star attraction to BDSM today a way to reassert your freedom? It could be, since it’s the thing we all currently miss the most.

But now the article is finished: have you been seized by an irrepressible desire for fetish fashion-themed shopping? To make the task easier for you in the gallery you will find some hot and à la page garments and accessories, along with inspirations from celebs and Spring / Summer 2022 fashion shows.

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

– Miley Cyrus as Britney Spears: friends of red latex
– Latex on: are we all a little fetish?
– A fetish touch