PHURC WORK: Ball MC Leigh Hutchinson in one of her Phurc latex outfits (photo: Tony Mitchell)
Friday (30) was the first day of the German Fetish Fair, in its newly expanded form occupying half the upper floor of Magazin in der Herresbäckerei in addition to its regular ground-floor space.
German Fetish Fair grows by 50%
The extra space provided room for a total of almost 50 exhibitors this year. It also proved that last year’s GFB, where for the first time almost all vendors were fetish clothing or accessory brands, was not just a one-off.
BDSM-orientated exhibitors, though not completely absent, had a smaller presence than in earlier times. But given that the new Passion fair in Hamburg and the original BoundCon in Munich are both more orientated towards BDSM products, interest in such items is hardly under-served.
Having said that, I can’t let the arrival in Berlin of one new BDSM brand, Swedish Collar, go unremarked. This company debuted with beautifully engineered deep collars in black and natural steel, along with matching cuffs.
The collars are unique in that they have an elliptical (rather than circular) form that closely follows the contours of the human neck. They also have clever locking systems that are virtually invisible, yet simple to use and as secure as conventional locks.
NECK’S BIG THING? Kari Berg models a steel
collar by new Fair exhibitor Swedish Collar
Kari Berg, who is soon to feature in the company’s official publicity images, enthusiastically modelled one of the natural steel collars (above) for me. Later she was seen walking around the fair in a sinister black version that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Game of Thrones.
From the heaviest of metal restraints to the most decorative of bondage-inspired creations: very noticeable around the Fair this year was the ubiquity of harness-style accessories in rubber, leather, rope and plastic materials.
Popular on the mainstream clubbing scene, this was a trend I first observed at early outings of London’s Le Boutique Bazaar alt/fetish pop-up market.
It is now finding favour with fetish folk across the UK and Europe thanks to GFF exhibitors like London’s Figure of A and Ada Zanditon, Berlin labels like Jaded Jewall and colourful, brand new Foguelina, and other newbies such as Italy’s Blasted Skin, which specialises in exquisite laser-cut leather designs.
Friday’s Fair was the busiest I’ve ever seen it, and both Fair days produced numerous enjoyable people encounters as well as plenty of interesting products to view.
For example, having photographed Chrissie Seams on several previous occasions, I finally got to have a very agreeable chat with this legendary living art exhibit between Chrissie’s walkarounds in two amazing mirrored outfits (one by Catasta Charisma and the other by Divamp Couture).
I gather that more collaborations with Catasta are on the cards, which can surely only be a good thing!
A very welcome surprise at the Fair was bumping into my pal from GFBs of old, the inimitable Dante Posh. Now based in Vienna and no longer domming fulltime, she was nevertheless keeping her hand in during her GFB Weekend, as my picture from Saturday’s Ball indicates!
Have a break – have a KitKat
Friday night (31) was the night for everyone to reacquaint themselves with KitKatClub, courtesy of Martin Pelzer’s FetishGuerilla Revolution party.
Taking the advice I’d given to others to arrive before 11pm to avoid queuing, I was shocked to discover a line of people already trailing around the block at 10.30.
This was unprecedented in my experience. And to eventually get inside (still well before midnight) only to find the club already rammed to the rafters, was another shock.
I later learnt from Martin that the party had attracted 400 more people than last year, and he’d come close to closing the doors while people were still queueing to enter, but had subsequently relented.
Every inch of the place was jammed full of impressively-dressed (if sweaty) bodies, making photographing clubbers harder than ever because of the difficulty of standing far enough away without being knocked over!
Normally I manage to shoot at least some of the shows, but after one massive fail when a performance took place behind me while I looked in the opposite direction, I pretty much gave up on covering the entertainment.
The following day, people seemed to have been mostly uplifted by the FGR experience. And I must say that, despite the crush, the bar service at KitKat was impressively swift.
Nevertheless i suspect that reducing the maximum capacity next year would probably be welcomed by everyone.
PHOTO OP: Photographer MarcusT with Libidex
‘twins’ Leanne and Lily at FG Revolution, KitKat
Day Two of the German Fetish Fair on Saturday (June 1) was quieter than Day One. A few vendors seemed to be getting no interest from visitors at all, but others claimed they’d sold so much on Friday that they were quite happy just coasting through the second day.
I ended up in the Fair café having a strawberry Prosecco and a long chinwag with Swiss photographer Chris Brunner, who graciously helped me get drunk at last year’s Savage Wear Badehaus party.
Chris normally shoots for BeGloss at these events but this year he was partying rather than photographing — when, that is, he wasn’t playing tour guide to his Australian pals (the ones I first met at Kinky Cocktails).
He’s a fund of wonderful stories, most of them unpublishable, and it was great that he managed to share some of them later over Japanese food at Shibuya with me and my video team.
Designers: ‘Black is the new black’
Like KitKat on Friday, Saturday’s evening’s Ball was filled to capacity. The heat generated by so many rubber-clad bodies rammed into the Spindler & Klatt venue meant that escaping to the riverside terrace with its outside bar and seating areas was more popular than ever.
Evidently, however, the venue didn’t have enough staff working the outside bar to cater for the increased demand. This only reinforced Berlin’s reputation — particularly noticeable this year — for slow service, a flaw that took many first-timers at the GFB Weekend by surprise.
“It is really difficult to get good bar staff in Berlin”, FetishGuerilla’s Martin Pelzer had confirmed to me earlier in the week. The problem is that they’re not well paid, and Berlin’s modest tipping culture doesn’t provide sufficient opportunity to make up the difference.
The Ball offered those who stayed inside the venue the chance to watch fashion shows from seven latex designers, as well as a couple of individual performances and the European Fetish Awards ceremony with its prestigious annual prizes.
First of this year’s two awards was won by German label Maniac Latex, a relatively new entry to the rubber fashion scene.
The second went to Britain’s Cole Black, the man behind Latex Fashion TV, a brand dedicated to putting on video the best of rubbery endeavour at events both at home and abroad.
MUSHROOM MAGIC: Kay Morgan wears Shitake
latex in the German Fetish Ball fashion show
First out onto the 2019 catwalk was Shitake, a German latex brand that started out as the pet project of a photographer who originally made outfits as wardrobe for shoots — basically one-offs that were not commercially available.
Shitake’s all-black collection distinguished itself immediately by its extensive use of chlorinated latex with the reverse side on the outside (à la Kim West) for a silky alternative to the usual high-shine look.
Style and fit of this designer’s creations are both superb, with some of the most flatteringly sexy derrière cuts seen on any latex catwalk.
Given the preponderance of coloured latex in today’s fetish fashion, it seemed a bit of a running-order error to follow Shitake with Swedish label Maebelle, which had also chosen to show an all-black collection.
However, after a break for the Awards and an impressive fire show by Topanga Love, Dutch designer Luna’s Latex also took to the runway with outfits that were either black or a mix of black and muted shades such as gunmetal and maroon.
By the time fourth-on-the-catwalk, Hamburg-based Inner Sanctum, showed its collection of all-black and black-with-red-trim styles, I felt that one of two things must have happened.
Either each of these labels had been so confident everybody else would be showing latex in all the colours of the rainbow that they figured a collection in all-or-mostly-black would really stand out.
Or alternatively, one of the sheet latex suppliers had been holding a big sale on black when all these designers were planning their shows.
At least when UK men’s latex label Latex 101 had their turn, their mix of black with primary colours and textures was not unexpected. It’s their trademark style, and this was not only their debut on the GFB catwalk but also the first all-male show the Ball has ever featured, so why wouldn’t they go with it?
The evening’s second solo performance featured an amazing LED light show by Tukie Vanida that was frustratingly hard for me to photograph from my shooting position, now partially obstructed by two muscular blokes filming everything on their phones.
Brit designers bring on some colour
It was left to the last two designers — both British and both making their GFB runway debuts — to bring some full-spectrum colour back to the catwalk’s cheeks.
Lady Lucie’s figure-flattering styles in bold reds, pinks and leopard prints was a lesson in what can be done with latex if you have a background as a corsetière.
FLOWER POWER: Yummy Gummy designer
Rebecca in her stunning butterfly-winged gown
For her Yummy Gummy debut which closed the runway shows, designer Rebecca Allsop went in the opposite direction with diaphanous and flowing styles in pastels and flowery patterns celebrating femininity at its sexily softest.
Rebecca was also first, as far as I know, to use the venue’s video wall to introduce the concept behind her show before we saw her designs on the catwalk.
And when this designer took her bow at the end, dressed in an amazing buttefly-winged gown (above and gallery below), it was surely with the confidence that she’d brought something previously unseen to the German Fetish Ball experience.
After the shows, outside on the terrace, The Fetishistas video team managed to get some great interview footage with Ball MC Leigh Hutchinson and first time GFB guests Friday Sparkles from Sydney and Shannon Chromegirl from Los Angeles.
I think it was after 5am when I finally found myself trudging out toward the exit — by chance on the heels of the Bondinage crew. I was heading back to my hotel to sleep, but they were intent on continuing to party at KitKat (which stays open all weekend).
I heard later that police, who are normally virtually invisible in Berlin, had been parked outside KitKat and were not only stopping people on their way in to check for drugs, but had also gone into the venue.
I wondered it they’d just had an unusually boring Saturday night to be bothering with such behaviour, or whether it was worrying evidence of a shift in the city’s famously laissez-faire attitude. In due course, no doubt, we shall see.
First rule of the Goodbye Dinner
Officially, the GFB Weekend ends with the Farewell Brunch on Sunday morning/afternoon.
But for those of us for whom the morning and afternoon following a 6am party finish are concepts not to be experienced in actualité, the unofficial but very popular Goodbye Dinner in Kreuzberg provides a more civilised alternative.
OZ-MOSIS: Friday Sparkles, a great ambassador
for the Australian fetish scene at all the events
This event at an Indian restaurant renowned for its large open air dining space and ludicrously cheap cocktails attracts up to 50 fetish diners every year.
And like Fight Club, this event has important rules, one of which is: do not ever be the last person to leave.
If you are, the restaurant will demand that you pay not just your own bill but also the balance owed by any people in the party who have left ahead of you without settling their own bills in full — or indeed at all.
It’s important to know this because every year, there’s always an unpaid balance at the end that some unfortunate person gets lumbered with.
As I walked back to the hotel with a few others also heading for the nhow, who should catch up with us on their rental bikes but Ian Dutton and Shea Hovey.
It turned out that Ian, as last man out, had been obliged by the restaurant to pay the dinner bills of two people in our party who had apparently done a runner.
Understandably he wasn’t too happy about this, and we watched as the couple pedalled off towards Monster Ronsons on Warschauer Str, hoping to intercept the miscreants at the Models’ Karaoke Night. One can only hope that honour was ultimately satisfied.
BELOW: Some of the people – and a representative image from each of the shows – at this year’s German Fetish Ball. Click a preview to open the full gallery and click any thumbnail to start slideshow.
BOTTOM: Watch the teaser for a preview of what’s to come from our video coverage of GFB 2019
Tags: Awards, Designers, Fashion Shows, Fetish Fairs, Fetish Weekends, Models, Parties, Performers
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