Fetish Dayz

PUGH WHAT A SCORCHER! KYLIE’S KILLER CALENDAR

If there’s one thing better than seeing the lovely Kylie Minogue making a full recovery after treatment for breast cancer, it’s seeing the style with which she has made her return.

Australia’s most important export since Fosters lager, Kylie chose some of London’s hottest designers to give her the image with which she is launching her comeback tour in November, not to mention her official 2007 calendar (left).

In the UK, Kylie has long been not only a big mainstream pop name but also a gay icon. And like Kate Moss (see my earlier blog item) she has also been worth keeping an eye on for fetish style, displaying a frequent willingness to embrace, erm, extremes of costume both in her live shows and promotional photo shoots. Fetish fashion fans will surely have noted, for example, that one of Bondinage designer Stephen Fuller’s many claims to fame is that he kitted Kylie out in rubber for one of her legendary earlier tours.

Anyway, Ms M is now reasserting her rights over fetish chic by choosing outfits by such hotly-tipped designers as Gareth Pugh and Marios Schwab. The same Sunday Times Style mag that broke the new of Kate Moss’s move into overt erotica ran a Kylie cover story (right) featuring the singer done up with heavy metallic eye-make-up and Marcel-waved hair, reclining in a tight, white, corselet-style Schwab dress, hands crossed above her head in a pose suggestive of bondage submission.

Inside, the mag featured other outfits that appear in her calendar, shot by William Baker, including Gareth Pugh’s fabulous Harlequin body (below) and another tight dress by Marios Schwab, this time a little black number. Both these outfits are offset by a razor-sharp Louise Brooks bob and some extremely pervy black lace-up Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Of all the new wave London designers, Gareth Pugh is, of course, the one that pervs should be watching the closest. As Vogue’s reports show, he has taken all kinds of kinky influences from goth to the inflatable creations of House of Harlot and Pretty Pervy and melded them into an unmistakable style of his own that makes most of the other new season’s fashion collections look very ordinary. And even more impressively, he seems to have kept the fashionistas on his side, and avoided being ghettoised (as creators of such bold designs often are) as a pure novelty act for the catwalks.

Who’s going to be first to sport Gareth Pugh style at a fetish night, I wonder? This year’s Rubber Ball festivities would be the perfect opportunity to step out in something like the outfit on the right from his latest collection. So I for one will be keeping my eyes peeled next weekend for the first of the Pugh to appear.

www.garethpugh.net
www.kylie.com
www.sunday-times.co.uk
www.vogue.co.uk/Shows/Reports/Default.aspx?stID=38726

THE WEEK IN PERVERSITY/3: FROM PANTS TO ANTS

In the news in the past week — a selection of items not necessarily perverted, but definitely perverse…

NURSE, STOP SHOWING YOUR PANTS! An Essex hospital has banned its nurses from showing cleavage while on duty. Southend Hospital’s new uniform rules also outlaw G-strings peeking over trousers or skirts. Seems, though, that the hospital has fallen short of banning other aspects of traditional Essex dress such as white high heels, luminous orange legs, micro-length skirts and no knickers. Presumably that would be asking just too much.

FAITHFULL TO THE ORIGINAL I’m sure all our hearts go out to Marianne Faithfull, who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. And obviously when you’re a 59-year-old woman facing such a thing, what you want is for the Daily Mirror to publish the story alongside a big picture of you in your prime posing seductively in stockings and a basque which shows off your cleavage, and a quote claiming you have pledged to ‘bounce back’. Unfortunately for Marianne, who was famously Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the 1960s, her name is still linked in the minds of tabloid journalists to one particular sex myth involving the Stones’ singer. But I’m sure that was not what the Mirror sub-editor was thinking when, in the same story, he captioned an inset pic of her and Jagger: “With Mick in 69”.

That’s not supposed to be us in that TV show, is it?

GREETINGS FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE  Did you know that whenever you see a bizarre, non-sequitur or just downright substandard episode of a long-running TV sitcom or drama series, it means the main writers have gone on vacation and the stand-ins are in charge of the plot? Ever since I found this out, I’ve been looking for examples — and I think I just found two contenders, one from the USA and one from the UK. Has anyone else been wondering what has happened to The Sopranos, whose news series just started airing in the UK on E4, or to Spooks, which returned to BBC1/BBC3 last weekend? Neither of these usually gripping dramas appears to have kicked off its new run on the same planet the rest of us inhabit. Tony Soprano’s hospital coma dreams and Spooks’coup attempt on the British Government were both beyond belief. Did both series’ regular writers decide to take their holidays early this year?

(DON’T) WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO  So Ant and Dec, UK Saturday night TV stalwarts and hosts of such televisual milestones as I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, have each taken out insurance against the other dying. The exact sums insured haven’t been revealed but supposedly run into several million pounds. Dec said, “I just know that if Ant kicks the bucket, I get a massive payout.” Similarly, if Dec should go first, Ant will benefit. And if both should happen to die at the same time? Well in that case, obviously, everybody wins.   

KATE MOSS: FROM FASHION TO FETISH ICON

I can’t be alone in noticing that the ubiquitous Kate Moss is in the process of becoming a full-on fetish icon.

The supermodel is all over the fashion press at the moment in editorials and ads (such as this double-page Versace spread in Style), sporting the short hemline/ long-leg/spike-heel/any-colour-as -long-as-it’s-black look that threatens to make this autumn and winter’s high street style more palatable to pervs than fashion has been in ages. But top models are paid to display the season’s hot looks, and if that’s all there were to it, you could argue that, however appealing appearances may be, she’s just doing her job of being a classy clotheshorse.

However, as any Moss watcher will tell you (and we are legion), in her personal style, the model has been way ahead of the look that’s just coming in. She was teaming short hemlines with yards of black opaque-clad leg while the rest of A-list chickery was still intent on exposing max bare flesh from ankle to Brazilian. Moss can do skin as well as anybody, and has never been slow to play on her sexuality. So she must have decided that the competition among celebs to be as naked in public as possible while still technically wearing clothes had reached its nadir, and the only way forward for sexy was to start covering, in interesting ways, that which had become terminally overexposed.

The slinky, full-covered look that she adopted for partying and public appearances got enough attention on its own, and not just because she’s a guaranteed high street trendsetter. It just looked so right on her, not least because it indicated a person confident of the relation between clothes and sexual allure even at a time when she can’t have been that happy, given her continual harassment by the press over drug allegations and her relationship with Pete Doherty.

But then, a couple of weeks ago, came what might be called final confirmation of the model’s personal interest in clothing-based erotica, with the announcement that she was making her screen debut in a series of short, sexy films for Agent Provocateur. The Sunday Times Style magazine, a long- established fan of the British lingerie label, had the scoop on this news and ran it as its September 3 cover story, with a cover pic of Moss (left) in an all-black ensemble shot from an angle that emphasised those perfect, stocking-clad pins. Inside, the mag revealed that Kate had been persuaded by Agent Provocateur to make no less than four short ’n’ sexy films with veteran movie director Mike Figgis, who’d previously shot that nugget of naughtiness Tied Up At The Office for the same label.

Apparently when Agent Provocateur approached her, Kate’s reaction was to wonder why they hadn’t asked her before. She is, it appears, a big fan both of Figgis’ films and AP’s knickers. “It’s the only lingerie I wear,” she told the magazine. In fact she and AP’s founders Serena Rees and Joe Corre have been close for a decade, so this new collaboration is being hailed as a logical progression for all of them.

The films of Moss in (and out of) her favourite lingerie are collectively called The Dreams Of Miss X, and the first dream, Shadows, can be viewed now on the Agent Provocateur website. You have to register as a member, but it’s easy, free and, given what else the site regularly has on offer, well worth it. The remaining three movies will be released through the site on November 1, January 10 and March 1. Dates for the diary, I’d say.

www.agentprovocateur.com
www.sunday-times.co.uk
www.versace.com

LIBERTY IS DANCING IN THE LONDON RAIN

Sydney director Michael Ney’s documentary Liberty In Restraint, about a relatively unknown Australian fetish photographer called Noel Graydon, is a refreshing take on BDSM that is finally getting some serious interest from film festivals.

And this month I’m pleased to say it’s coming to London, where it will debut in the prestigious Raindance Film Festival. The 90-minute documentary gets a 10.15pm screening on Saturday September 30 at Cineworld  Shaftesbury Avenue (at the Trocadero), Picadilly, London W1.

Ney’s film gives the lie to the notion that Australia can’t teach the rest of the world anything about pervery, and I certainly hope that a distributor in the UK (Tartan springs to mind) will now see this as the serious piece of film-making it is, and be brave enough to give it a DVD release, if not a spin on the arthouse circuit.

I reviewed the original cut back in September of last year, and an updated review can now be found in the Reviews section of Fetish Dayz — just click here to read it.
www.libertyinrestraint.com 
www.raindancefilmfestival.org/festival/programme/index.htm

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO LONDON

Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s documentary The Pervert’s Guide To The Cinema Parts 1, 2 & 3, which I raved about in an early piece for this blog, has been picked up by London’s prestigious ICA.

After screenings this week at the Toronto Film Festival (last one on September 14), it comes to London where it will play at the ICA from October 6. It will then go on a regional tour through ICA Films before being released on DVD at the end of November.

The brilliant Zizek (right), who has said, "cinema is the ultimate pervert's art: it doesn't give you what you desire — it tells you how to desire", will curate a season of films at the ICA during October, including some of those featured in his documentary series.

He will also take part in a series of special events and give two talks relating to the film on Saturday and Sunday October 7 and 8.

It is, of course, a complete coincidence that this is also Rubber Ball Weekend.

www.ica.org.uk

THE WEEK IN PERVERSITY: FROM ASS TO Z-LIST

Three irresistible (but not necessarily fetishistic) press stories that caught my eye in the last week…

THE LAW IS AN ASS  Local councillors in Dallas, Texas are proposing a ban on the wearing of low-slung trousers that expose underwear. One of them, Ron Price, has called the fashion “embarrassing and disgusting” and says he’s “against people walking around with their pants below their buttocks”. How often he’s against them is not revealed. Nor is whether he’s just against men doing it, or whether he is also pressing for women to drop their pants-parading habits. Funny isn’t it, when you think of all the other fashion crimes that the word ‘Dallas’ evokes, flaunting your Calvins really doesn’t seem worthy of that much fuss.

GETTING AHEAD OF THE PACK  A British mum who bought a pack of hot and spicy chicken wings from the supermarket found it contained an unexpected bonus — a chicken head, complete with beak, eyes and a bit of neck. “I just feel sick every time I think about it,” said Anika Cummings of Cardiff. “I won’t buy another chicken in my life.” Too right — who would ever have guessed the little f***ers once had heads, eh? Anyway, my advice to her is to pop along with a freezer bag to Downing Street, where a whole cabinet full of headless chickens will soon be going cheap. Meanwhile, another supermarket shopper has just discovered a three-legged frog — alive — in a packet of watercress. Efforts by the store to persuade the customer that this was considered as lucky as finding a four-leaf clover have so far proved unsuccessful.

THERE’S GOTH TO BE AN ALTERNATIVE  As the autumn arrives and brings the goth look to a high street near you, we’ll be faced with the prospect of a lot of extremely ungothly Z-list celebs undergoing moody makeovers that their personal stylists assure them are necessary if they are not to fall behind in the fashion stakes. So it was predictable that after Victoria Beckham ‘went goth’ with black-painted fingernails a couple of weeks ago, that other shopaholic WAG Coleen McLoughlin (aka Mrs Wayne Rooney) would want to go further. Colleen duly appeared done up in black from the tip of her lace-up stiletto kneeboots to the top of her top hat in a photo shoot for celebrity rag Closer, who tagged her story ‘I’m a secret vamp’. Yes, of course you are dear.  Please, make it stop now.

LOS ANGELES TURNS OVER A NEW LEAF

People have often complained that Los Angeles is surprisingly lacking in quality fetish events given that it plays home these days to such a vibrant community of creative pervs. But that could all be about to change, thanks to the efforts of two local promoting talents who, in different ways, are both making fresh starts in LA with two very different kinds of fetish event this very month.

James J, who was until recently involved in promoting the Los Angeles Bondage Balls and other LA fetish events, has severed his ties with former partner DJ Courtney in order to spread his wings and run his own promotions.

And his first event is no small coup. It’s the launch party for O — The Power of Submission, Ernest Greene’s adult video remake of legendary SM novel Story of O for the Adam & Eve label.

The Surrender of O party on Thursday September 14 at Boardners will feature performances from the cast, which includes Carmen Luvana in the title role and Greene’s missus Nina Hartley (both seen right) as well as bondage/SM queen Claire Adams. There’ll also be rubber fashion, dancing, BDSM play and numerous giveaways.

The following Friday, September 22, sees the debut of an entirely new kind of perv event for LA — a fetish dinner and cabaret night called Masque. The brainchild of Kink In the Caribbean promoter Robert Fluty who recently moved to Los Angeles from New York, Masque has been inspired by the success of the Twisted City fetish dinner cabaret Fluty organised as part of the Absolute Kink Amsterdam perv-fest back in April.

The venue for this event, The Entertainium, has been described as one of LA’s best-kept secrets. It’s a fully licensed downtown movie studio with numerous theatrical sets and themed rooms — including a jail cell set (below) that will surely have special appeal to Masque’s target audience.

The evening’s entertainment reprises that winning teaming from the Amsterdam event — MC Paul Nathan and the Porcelain Twinz — plus top fetish model Emily Marilyn, hot new LA contender Natalie Minx and others. At midnight, the Entertainium floors will be cleared and the play equipment brought on for the Eyes Wide Shut after-party. Unlike most LA events which close at 2am, this will go through until 5am, with a complimentary breakfast served at 3am.

Knowing the Los Angeles scene and both promoters as I do, I reckon both events will be well worth attending if you’re in the locality. If you are, but can’t make either of those dates, you might want to circle President’s Day Weekend 2007 (February 16-18) in your diary, because I hear that’s when these two talents will be teaming up to promote an event together for the first time. Not just any event, either, but Los Angeles’ first full-on fetish weekend, headlined by a big party called the Kink Ball.

If these guys deliver together in the way they have individually in the past, then mark my words — we could be seeing the start of a significant shift in the West Coast’s ‘must do’ pervy partying habits.

www.surrenderofo.com
www.othepowerofsubmission.com
www.whatismasque.com
www.myspace.com/surrenderofo
www.myspace.com/whatismasque
www.kinkball.com
 

DON’T LOOK NOW

It is impossible not to feel profound sympathy for Liz Longhurst, whose daughter Jane was killed in 2003 by a man said to be obsessed with violent internet pornography.

Even so, it would be profoundly misguided to support the bill to criminalise the viewing of such material announced last week by the British Government. This bill, inspired by the anti-porn campaign launched by Mrs Longhurst after her daughter’s death, aims to make the viewing of extreme internet porn punishable by three years’ imprisonment and placement on the sex offenders’ register.

The bill would outlaw images of pornographic, explicit and real or apparently real acts of serious violence, necrophilia and bestiality — ‘serious violence’ being defined here as that which ‘appears to be life-threatening or likely to result in serious, disabling injury’. It seeks to do this despite every stage of the process which produced these proposals being flawed, from the verdict in the original trial of Jane Longhurst’s killer to the dubious weighting given to special interest groups in the later public consultation…

Click here to read the complete article