Tag: Fashion

A Kinky Advantage

AI generated images are showing up with increasing frequency in my media feeds. They still have a slightly fake soulless feel to them, as if they were created by ad agencies for marketing campaigns, but the quality has undeniably taken a big jump forward. For example, this thread has some interesting examples of how it can simulate different camera lenses.

This inevitably means people are going to try to create pornography with it. Which, equally inevitably, is going to lead to an evolving battle with the tech companies and government over what’s allowed and what gets censored. It’s a cycle that has played out with every technical evolution since the dawn of time.

Fortunately, kink might actually have an advantage here, because our take on what constitutes erotic material tends to be a lot wider than most peoples. For example, consider the image below. I doubt an image classifier would ever tag it as pornography but I’m betting a significant fraction of my readers will find it very erotic. I predict that a lot of kinky creative types are going to have fun creating non-explicit imagery that pushes their own personal buttons. The results might not be great art, but AI will probably do a better job than amateurs with basic photoshop tools.

Unfortunately I don’t have a source for this. Guessing it’s a mainstream fashion shot that I stumbled on via a femdom tumblr.

One More Snap

Here’s a final post in my kinky micro-niche theme of ‘Women photographing men from positions of power.’ Although, having said it’s a micro-niche, it was actually surprisingly easy to find images for it. For example, here’s another one I posted a few years back. I suspect the reason for that is the same reason that lots of books feature authors as a leading character. It’s easy to portray what you know, so photographers create images of people creating images.

This is Mischa Barton shot for Genlux magazine in 2009. The actual photographer was Marc Baptiste. You can see more from the shoot here.

Snapping Her Shot

I’m continuing the theme of ‘Women photographing men in poses of power.’ It’s a niche kink I’ll admit, but when you’re ten years and a few thousand posts into kinky blogging, then getting around to micro-niche kinks is inevitable at some point. This one even has a little suggestion of bondage thrown in.

This is Uma Thurman with Marcus Schenkenberg, as shot by Ellen Von Unwerth for Vs Magazine. You can see more shots from the session here. Sadly none of the others have quite the same vibe as this one.

Why Size Matters

My post on long gloves triggered a number of interesting comments. Readers had a variety of different theories on why they were particularly sexy. With advance apologies to the original commenters, I’ll try and summarize them here. I may well screw this up.

  1. Long gloves are explicitly decorative rather than functional, so sends a signal of being desirable and wishing to attract attention.
  2. Gloves are protective armor, insulating the wearer from the world. So long gloves emphasize this separation, elevating the wearer above the viewer.
  3. They emphasize the limb and trigger thoughts of either touching or being touched by them. That’s particularly true for sleek sensual materials like latex, leather, velvet, etc.
  4. Gloves communicate both intent and, in the case of long gloves, high status. Once the gloves are pulled on then things – possibly evil things – are about to happen.

What I like about these theories is that they’re all different, possibly contradictory, yet entirely plausible. In fact it’s possible that they might be simultaneously contradictory and yet all correct, which seems impossible. They work in different ways for different people in different contexts.

This is Cindy Crawford shot by Ellen Von Unwerth for Italian Vogue in 1991. Which of the above theories matches to this particular image? I think I could make a case that it works for all of them.

Stare to Nowhere

A final post in a trio featuring eye contact and gaze. Having featured mismatched gazes and intense eye contact, I couldn’t finish without an example of what’s a high fashion classic. Not to mention album covers. That’s the stare in random directions while appearing to think deep thoughts about life, the universe and everything. In this case there’s even the bonus of a huge sculptured head in the background joining in the random staring fun.

Mistress Antoinette

I’m going to close this series of vintage themed posts by returning to the first one in it. Several readers reached out via comments and emails to say that the domme in the photograph was a Mistress Antoinette. I’d not been aware of her until now, but by all accounts she was an amazing person.

This Rialto Report article provides some interesting background, with tributes from the likes of Dita Von Teese and Annie Sprinkle. Among her many accomplishments was publishing the fetish and femdom Reflections Magazine and creating the fashion company Versatile Fashions. You can hear from Mistress Antoinette as well as see some of her creations in this 1997 video of the Dressed To Thrill Ball.

One reader was kind enough to send me a lovely story of his interaction with her back in the 80’s. I’m sharing it below with his permission.

Way back In 1983, while driving back to San Diego after a few days of climbing in Yosemite National Park, I visited her fetish clothing store, Versatile Fashions Boutique. To my delight she was in the store that day, and was very kind when I told her that I was a longtime fan who loved being submissive to women. She had a reporter coming in for an interview, and for his benefit I was allowed to play her slave, footstool, bootlicker, and errandboy while she chatted merrily and casually with the reporter. It was a wonderful experience for me, exercising my macho rock climber persona on one day, and my worshipful slave persona the next. Plus she was just such a decent person with a big heart and a wonderful sense of humor.

She’s now retired and, based on this article, is sadly suffering from some health problems. She was clearly a kinky pioneer with a great personality. I’m sure we all wish her well in retirement.

Although Ms Antoinette has retired, the fashion company continues today under the brand Versatile Corsets.

An Aside

I was planning to continue my theme of phrases and vocalizations I’d heard from dommes during kinky play. Unfortunately time has run short and I haven’t put together the post I was originally thinking about. So I’ll save that for tomorrow and instead let me offer a momentary aside, courtesy of Ellen Von Unwerth. She’s always a reliable source for beautifully shot fashionable femdom.

Anthony Vaccarello

Whenever I see a fashion editor going on about a ‘dominatrix look’ I brace myself for disappointment. It normally means one of the models wore a pair of boots or – even worse – a leather choker. However, I have to admit that this papermag article on the 2020 Saint Laurent collection by designer Anthony Vaccarello doesn’t get it wrong. It’s a pretty hot and kinky collection, with some serious dominatrix vibes. I particularly like the combination of pussybow blouses with shiny latex pants as shown in this linked image. That’s fetish meets old fashioned schoolmistress, a particularly fab combo in my eyes. I also love the latex dress in the image below. Impractical no doubt, but beautiful and sensual.

Most Overrated Pose

This post was originally going to feature the most overrated item in the BDSM toolbox. After the last couple of posts on underrated equipment, I thought that might be a fun way to finish this series. Unfortunately, after pondering the idea, I’m not sure there are any good candidates for that category. Everything commonly used has its fans. I’m personally not a fan of blindfolds, but I know that a lot of other kinksters love them. Figging would be another personal choice for overrated activities, but I’m not sure something so niche could ever be described as overrated.

Instead let me go with the most overrated BDSM pose, as exemplified by the image below. This kind of shot crops up in fashion shoots all the time. It’s a strong visual and one photographers always reach for when wanting to portray a femdom dynamic. Yet in my opinion, it doesn’t work well in real play. There’s no sense of connection between the domme/sub and, if you want to do objectification, then a footstool or table position is much easier to maintain for a longer period. It’s a pose that’s great for a camera but not much else.

This is the model  Lydia Possner as shot by Markus Brink. More images from the same shoot in this post.