KRYSTINA KITSIS celebrates EctoMorph at 40 with a fascinating personal retrospective for The Fetishistas on the modern fetish fashion scene’s evolution and her part in it. The Big 4-0 is also marked with a totally new website and new latex collection, Back to Black (photo: Phil Flannery)
Krystina Kitsis and EctoMorph latex: 40 years in fetish fashion
SEPTEMBER COVER STORY: In July this year, designer Krystina Kitsis’ latex clothing brand EctoMorph reached its 40th birthday, making it the world’s longest continuously-trading latex fashion label. Here, Krystina celebrates this milestone with an insightful personal retrospective on the evolution of the modern fetish fashion scene – from the original 1983 Skin Two Club that inspired her to launch EctoMorph in 1985, to last month’s impressive redesign of her EctoMorph website. The new site leads with Back to Black, her new latex collection reflecting both the current monochrome trend in high fashion latex and her own design roots. Banner: Our Cover Star Miriam Veil wears Latex Dress with Gathered Neckline from EctoMorph’s Back to Black Collection. Photography: Darren Birkin
Introduction by Fetishistas publisher Tony Mitchell
I’ve known Krystina Kitsis since we first bumped into each other at the original Skin Two club at Stallions back in 1983.
She was taking pictures of fetish party people for her Royal College of Art postgrad research, and I was doubling as a Skin Two innner circle member while holding down a full-time job as a music journalist on Sounds.
We bonded, becoming friends, and both of us were subsequently drawn into early creative partnerships with publisher Tim Woodward.
I began contributing my journalistic skills under a pseudonym to Tim’s new Skin Two magazine in 1984 (from Issue 2 on). Krystina, meanwhile, teamed up with Tim to relaunch Skin Two as a clubbing brand in July 1985, with an Embassy Club night that also publicly launched her EctoMorph latex clothing label.
She was, if not the very first, then certainly one of the first fashion graduates to apply her fashion education to running a latex clothing brand. This is now more common than not in the latex clothing world, but at that time, such clothing was mainly made by self-taught rubber enthusiasts.
My friendship with Krystina has now endured more than 40 years, and I’m delighted she has chosen The Fetishistas as the platform to share her memories of the past four decades, not least because it expands on — and largely supports — my own version of that same period of fetish history!
As Krystina discusses below, her 40th anniversary has been marked not only by the launch of a new EctoMorph latex collection titled Back to Black (in tribute to Amy Winehouse), but also by the relaunch of Ectomorph.com as a totally redesigned and gorgeously fashion-forward new website.
Her new website makes full use of the many great creative collaborations Krystina has undertaken with photographers over the decades. It is packed with high quality editorial-style fashion images rather than the white-background catalogue shots that populate many latex retail sites.
We’ve used small versions of some of these images throughout this article — along with many others illustrating various chapters in the Kitsis story. But each page of these four pages also finishes at the bottom with galleries of larger versions of the same images, where these are available.
Although a four-pager might seem rather a TLDR prospect, Kyrstina’s story is broken up here into short, self-contained topics with their own headings, like mini-chapters.
So while the article can be read as a more or less contiguous account of EctoMorph’s history, the reader can also just dip into any of the topics that appeal most at any given time!
Whichever approach you take, you will find lots of informative, entertaining insights into how the modern scene has evolved from its early-’80s origins. So read on, and enjoy! TM
Krystina Kitsis on how a nice girl from Hendon got here…
How did a nice girl from Hendon get here? Well here begins my story, which I’m sharing to celebrate my company EctoMorph notching up 40 years of making latex.
I acquired my initial tailoring education in the late 1970s at St Martins School of Art, under the tutelage of Mr Crown.
I went on to work as a student intern for him at his couture company La Chasse in Kensington, alongside budding milliner Stephen Jones, whose obsession with hats began there.
I graduated from St Martins in 1980 with a BA
in Fashion and Textiles, and this provided the foundations for my emerging ideas to filter fetish through fashion.
I enrolled for a Masters Degree course at the Royal College of Art.
And my interest in fetish further developed while researching at the RCA for my MA thesis on the connection between sexuality and fashion.
Professor Christopher Frayling was my supervisor and mentor. The course enabled me to think about sadomasochism and where I would like to take it.
Stallions, Embassy, Soundshaft and fashion’s first embrace
As if by serendipity: in 1983, during my last year at the RCA, I witnessed the opening, in January that year, of the original Skin Two club at Stallions in London’s Soho. It provided the turning point for my direction into making rubber.
CLUBBER at David Claridge and Daniel James’s original Skin Two at Stallions, where Krystina was a regular (photo: Krystina Kitsis, 1983)
This was where I first met Tim Woodward, who would go on to acquire the Skin Two name for his proposed fetish magazine.
That happened after the original club changed its name to Maitresse later in 1983, when Skin Two founder David Claridge departed to focus on his burgeoning television career.
The fetish scene some two years later in 1985 when I set up EctoMorph was still tiny and underground — a very different beast from its ubiquitous presence across social media today.
The public launch of my company took place not long after Woodward published the first edition of his Skin Two magazine in 1984. Together, he and I decided to co-host a new series of Skin Two nights, the first of which, set for July 1985, would also provide the launchpad for EctoMorph.
FLYER for the new Skin Two Club night at the Embassy that launched EctoMorph in July 1985; it also featured latex by Kim West and Pure Sex
I had long been a frequent clubber — it was in my blood! — and I’d been a regular patron of 1983’s original Skin Two club.
Our new event was held at the Embassy Club (earlier the birthplace of the Batcave goth club) in Old Bond Street, the beating heart of high fashion in the capital.
After its debut at the Embassy, our new Skin Two Club became a weekly event initially taking place at Soundshaft, a small venue attached to (and owned by) London’s famous Heaven venue.
It functioned as a gay club on other nights and had recently been refurbished with cages and fetish equipment.
Fashion Week provides an early break
Fashion at the time was very hierarchical — a state imposed by the organisers of Fashion Week, which took place in Olympia with big name designers on the ground floor, high street brands above and young designers at the top.
A vetting system was in place, and as a young designer, I was lucky enough to be
included. This was a first for latex alongside fashion companies like Bodymap, Boy, Fake London and English Eccentrics, to name but a few.
And so started the flow of latex fashion into boutiques in the UK and overseas, and the spread of fetish clothes as a fashion concept.
Prior to this, latex in shops had mainly been found in red light districts or segregated zones; exceptions were She An Me near Olympia and a brief appearance from 1974 to 1976 in Westwood and McLaren’s shop Sex on the King’s Road.
Kings Rd boutique is first with EctoMorph
A boutique on the King’s Road was also the first to sell my collection of EctoMorph latex. Quasimodo provided glam and street-style fashion to the music industry and was a Mecca for overseas buyers during Fashion Week.
My selling point has always been to filter fetish through fashion, and Quasimodo was perfectly placed to blend latex into their range of funky pinstripe, fake fur animal-print suits and sequin dresses.
VOGUE EctoMorph publicity board made for a Quasimodo window display; it was later stolen (photo: Peter Lindbergh; model: Tatjana Patitz)
Being staffed by Page Three girls (models from the Sun newspaper’s daily pin-up pages) and frequented by stylists meant it got a lot of media coverage in the pages of Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire as well as the tabloids.
A feature in the Press would generate a huge run on any style shown.
Such was the desirability of the garments depicted that one of the photo publicity boards featuring EctoMorph latex that Vogue had placed in Quasimodo for use as a window display backdrop was stolen by someone — a fetish enthusiast, one presumes — who sent a taxi to collect it under some false pretext.
The shop assistant naïvely believed this story and the poster was never seen again.
EASTENDERS actors Shirley Sheraton, wearing EctoMorph, and Ross Davidson in celeb fashion shoot for The Sun (photo: Beverley Goodway)
The presence of latex in a high street boutique prompted continuous coverage, especially in the tabloids, which would sensationalise the wearing of ’risqué’ clothing by band singers and soap actors, thus helping to spread the concept of fetish.
More fetish clubs began to open, providing a platform and venue for the wearing of these new creations. (Continues on Page 2)
BELOW: EctoMorph latex in the fashion show at the Embassy Club night in July 1985 that launched the brand and relaunched the Skin Two Club (photos: Andy Phillips; model, left: Sue Scadding)
Page 1 Galleries: Larger Versions and Bonus Images
CLICK/TAP either preview below to open gallery then click/tap any thumbnail to start slideshow
Share On Facebook
Tweet It
