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
I have done a quick scan of your well written blog and will be stopping by in the future as I like your perspective.
As someone who has been interested in fetish for decades... before the birth of the SkinTwo empire I am curious as to how you define fetish. On the face this seems like a rather simple question... even if like.. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. But fetish is an evolving term to say the least.
Within the fet community there is a cheering section which thrills whenever something / someone fetish appears in the press. On the one hand one presumes this is paving the way for a more general acceptance of fetish looks and will mean that John and Jane Doe will feel more emboldened to wear their rubber on the street.
Since no one is getting hauled off to jail on a fetish violation... what actually IS preventing fetish from being more worn on the backs of people today on the street? Is it that it is still wearing a tainted of perverse sexual dysfunction? So despite the mainstreaming of fetish by couture designers, celebs, pop stars and models... why is there still as much or a stigma as there appears to be?
One could also argue that too much of a good thing is a bad thing and we may get what we all wish for and loose something we had. I for one have very mixed feelings about the mainstreaming of fetish. Commodification seems to sink everything down to the lowest common denominator and were fetish do sink as oppose to rise it would be a rather awful fate.
So the underground and exclusivity is part of the attraction and site like this... and commercial ventures like SkinTwo are sewing the seeds, in a sense, for the destruction of fetish... at least a certain flavor of it.
I must immediately point out that fetish has truly evolved in the last decade in terms of quality offerings both in style and construction including the more perverse fetishes which have all blossomed under the influence of the WWW. Truth be told 95% of my own fetish things and experiences have come in this period of expansion and mainstreaming and ... dare I say ... exploitation, after years of frustration!
Are you conscious of where fetish is going? Who is driving it there? What are the main forces propelling fetish to a new place in our culture in the near and even distant future? Are you unhappy with any of the recent developments in the world of fetish?
Dark
Posted by: Dark | 29 October 2006 at 03:28 PM
Hey Tony, I just stumbled across your blog and I'm addicted already!
Sorry we weren't able to chat more while we were in London, but I hope to return to the UK very soon.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Miss Fuzzy Bunny | 18 October 2006 at 04:32 PM