I have a confession to make. I can’t really call it a fetish, but I really like afros. It’s true! The thing is they are just finally making a real come back. Problem is mostly with men. When I began drawing this up, I almost drew her bald. I wanted to get down exactly where the head was, and realized I’ve rarely drawn a woman bald. Then, a thought came that she would look really good as black, and I’d like to use an afro for her hair.
I could put a couple of finishing touches on this and call it done, but I want to add some chains or braided leather in the background (that’s the x behind her), and of course add the darker flesh tone and color the latex.
Meanwhile, after six hours of typing, the transcription of the interview with The Baroness is complete. I stopped counting after six pages. Now if this sounds like we were chatting all day, keep in mind this was about an hour and a half of interview. The last half hour became critical. We were wrapping up, and she described what she has in mind to do next. It was morning, not my best time for social skills, and I let out a stifled chuckle, with what sounded like a pained “yea.” This did not sound right, and The Baroness was quick to pick up on it and ask what the deal was. A rant came forth. This became one of the most essential parts of the interview. It came out great, but won’t make it into the final except as a highly edited form. So here’s what happened:
Baroness: As a designer, what I am working on is the hardcore bizarre SM fashion. As I’m a player, my approach to it is different. It’s not delicate “Oh here I am for the fashion ball.” It’s more like “I’m going to drag you kicking and screaming down the street with it and it won’t break!”
Moyes: Yea! *Laughs*
Baroness: Ok, what’s so funny?
Moyes: That really is refreshing for me. We’ve got some nice fashion designers involved in the Miss Rubber World competition. Some are more mainstream like Dawnamatrix Madria and Klawtex, and others are more bizarre and kinky, like Archean of Kink Engineering. Bizarre Magazine and people like Peter Czernich of Marquis, and Tim Woodward of Skin Two have presented rubber as “going nuclear” in kink and fetish. Rubber trumps everything. Rubber trumps lingerie, rubber trumps leather. Nobody starts out a description of an over the top, wild, sexy, night with “I walked out the door wearing corduroy!”
Baroness: *Laughs*
Moyes: While at the same time, latex does have this delicate aspect because it can tear and deteriorate if dry and hot. So to hear a designer say they want to drag someone down the street using latex is encouraging from a kinky durability standpoint. The only time someone kinky wants this stuff to come apart is when we tear it apart!
Baroness: I’m a maker of things! I don’t want my toys to break. I’m very hardcore!
Moyes: The adult industry right now is trying to wrap it’s head around fetish between Fifty Shades of Grey, latex fetish, and BDSM. In the trade shows, I’ll see some good things, like Stockroom and Syren build things specifically for hardcore BDSM players. That’s why they came out with Kink Lab, so mom and pop stores could have real gear for the kinky.
However, having worked at AVN, we got some of the strangest crap, masquerading as fetish come across our desks for review. Kinky editors, with professional domination experience would walk up to me and ask “What is this?” and we would have to look this up in a catalog to make heads or tails of contraptions with plastic boxes and tangled faux leather straps. They looked like they might last 10-15 minutes at the most.
Baroness: Few things are pleasurable when they are something that is something else. There’s nothing more annoying than something that doesn’t work. It breaks, or you have to be casual with it. You unscrew something and the part gets lost in the club, which is the end of that toy. I’m a hardcore player, so I like things that are really, really, strong. If I’m making it, and my name is on it, I cannot have it break, because there’s my reputation, but also because I’m hardcore. I want it to do these hardcore, horrible things and not break a $2000 outfit. Such as my inflatables, I really love inflatables. They’re so thrilling, and latex as a play item is such a specific thing.
It’s so cerebral. You hand somebody a paddle and they think “I will hit you with it.” You hand someone something in latex and they have to really think about what they can do. Chances are, they haven’t come up with the other 10 things I’ve come up with.
First thing I tell people when they get latex outfits is “You’ve got to go out in the water!” and by water, I mean, take a shower in it. Go in the pool. Go to the beach. Go in the Jacuzzi. Go in the rain! Put ice cubes on yourself.
There’s a bunch of things you can do with latex. When you’re in the sucky bed, the vacuum bed, there’s the aspect of sound manipulation. When someone’s inside a sucky bed, you can put cold chains on them. The weight combined with the feel of it and the coolness of the chains, all these things are a real mental place from a top’s point of view and a bottom’s point of view, which is really thrilling.
I started using the sucky bed, because I was given one, and I thought “Who did they make this for, a Japanese dwarf?” and the breath hole was way too low. I want to stand top of this thing with my heels and get at a person. Well the latex will break immediately. So I look to make the hardcore stuff that you can do hard stuff to.
A lot of what I make doesn’t make it to the web site. It’s made for customers, and we’ll build it. We made this amazing squid type of thing, with inflatable materials and straps and buckles. His feet would be strapped up to his head. There’s a long blow up part. Each time he came over, we’d make it more and more intense.
I love the intellectual aspect of latex. Obviously, I’m passionate about latex as a material, but as a player, I think there’s nothing more exciting than that!
Special thanks to The Baroness for her great interview about latex design for fashion and BDSM. Next step is to edit this down for publication. We may have enough for two separate interviews.
Dungeon Net
Hogspy
