Charlotte reckons there has been a noticeable change in the dress standards of people — especially newbies — going to a TG night since LBB has provided them with a physical place to buy suitable outfits.
“People can use Google, but if you put in a search term like ‘latex clothing’ you get flooded with the big brands. Or you can go onto Etsy but it’s a minefield, and a huge commitment of time to do that.”
So despite the supposed all-pervading convenience of internet shopping, it seems the value of an actual bricks ’n’ mortar emporium offering the choice LBB offers is not to be underestimated.
“I often think about it like this: if you give out flyers, it’s a great way to reach people about different aspects of the scene. But nothing sells something better than seeing it and chatting to the designer.
“We all buy from people we’ve met and we like and we feel secure with. If you have a part of your body you’re not confident about, and you meet a designer and they say, ‘Oh I can add sleeves to anything in the collection if you don’t want to show your arms’, it gives that reassurance to people.”
And for British shoppers in particular — renowned as we are for feeling awkward when we’re the only potential customer in a studio or shop — the Boutique Bazaar environment means you can easily move on, and there’ll always be somebody else ready to step in behind you.
“You can just walk away,” says Charlotte. “You can walk around and see the difference in the thickness of the rubber people use, the different kinds of cuts and collections people do.”
From the designer’s standpoint, even a couple of sales on the day should cover the cost of the pitch and the transport — and then it’s a matter of waiting for the after sales.
‘We’re a community-based scene. You can have a cocktail with somebody while you’re talking about buying a dress — it takes a bit of the pressure out of it’
“I might not buy something on the day but a couple of months later I’ll remember that thing I saw,” says Charlotte. “A big part of it for traders is gearing up for future sales with people.
“I think of it as a promotional tool for designers, rather than just being about sales on the day; it gets you out there.
“And we’ve always been a community-based scene, always been about people. You can have a cocktail with somebody while you’re talking about buying a dress — it takes a bit of the pressure out of the process.”
While latex clothing is a key ingredient in the mix at LBB, accessory designers have also been an important part of its offer right from the beginning. Because, Charlotte reminds me, it’s the detail that makes all the difference.
“I say to people all the time, ‘Don’t just buy the dress, don’t just put on the leather jeans. Add the gloves, the mask, the bag. A lot of fetish stuff is expensive, so buy the core item, then come to us to find something really unusual to pair with it.”
While it’s great that you can find real show-stopping pieces at Boutique Bazaar from latex designers like Dead Lotus Couture’s Nange Magro, Charlotte thinks people sometimes need reminding that you can also shop there for a pair of leggings.
“Not everyone wants to have a showstopper piece because you can’t wear it 20 times. In the age of social media, you feel like you’ve overworked it.
“I feel I have to rotate my outfits very differently from even five years ago. Travelling to various TG events, I used to wear something to London, then wear it to Rome, then to Berlin, then Edinburgh. But now it’s: ‘I’ve posted ten pictures in this outfit — it’s done’.”
To extract maximum value from her own latex budget, Charlotte says she will often go to a Libidex cellar sale and pick up black latex leggings and black pencil skirts.
“I don’t need to spend 200 quid on those items,” she points out. “So I can then buy a top from Dead Lotus or someone and pair it with those leggings and it has made the whole outfit affordable.”
In terms of accessories, LBB has always been home to quite a few harness-wear designers, which is good to know, given how popular strappy stuff has become — including with Charlotte herself. She tells me:
“I bought a harness at one of the early LBBs and I’ve worn it to death! I wear it over a plain vest and jeans or something, and it makes my daytime outfit edgy — and that’s the sort of thing a lot of customers come to Boutique Bazaar in.
“They’re travelling on the tube and don’t want to attract too much attention, but it is edgy. The same with the cuffs and collars. Perhaps people don’t know all the connotations of the collars etc, but on Instagram fashion, you see how much people are wearing things like this.
“You see lingerie being worn with extra straps poking through something. A couple of people have done pentagram-style straps on lingerie, and you can just wear a v-neck black jumper over the top but it gives you that visible edge to your daywear.
“I love buying items that I can still wear out to dinner with my partner without being, like, ‘Excuse me everyone, I’ve worn a rubber dress in a normal restaurant, look at me’.
“It can look really stylish and just add that little edge to what you’re doing, and there’s definitely a big element of that with Boutique Bazaar.”
Does Charlotte think the mainstreaming of latex and other fetish elements as ‘celebrity style’ has attracted more non-fetish types to the event?
“Yeah, definitely. We have small element of customers that are more young fashion types, and they’ll go for somebody like Prong, who do all the accessories like BDSM-ish collars, or Stutter, who do the acrylic necklaces and jewellery.
“I notice that the fashion types often get chatting to the hardcore fetish people at the bar. Maybe they’ve thought Torture Garden is out of their comfort zone, then they come to the day and realise everyone’s lovely and not these bizarre stereotype gimp characters that have been portrayed historically.
“And they end up saying, ‘These people are really nice, I’ve friended them on Facebook and I’m going to try a party’. And again that’s a big thing we wanted to do, because we felt there wasn’t a social hub in London after the Skin Two Weekend and the Barbican Weekend both finished.”
This prompts me to ask Charlotte how important she thinks the London location of Boutique Bazaar is to the success of the event. Could it work in other cities?
“That’s a good question,” she replies. “I think it’s really important that you don’t try and pretend to know about things you don’t know about.
“We all have areas we’re good at and we all have a network of people that are the right people. It’s the same with a club or market.
“When Torture Garden does parties outside London or outside the UK, we’ll have a local partner and they’ll have a mailing list, and they’ve got that special knowledge for it.”
Alex and Charlotte have had other locations for an LBB suggested to them —Manchester for example — but have resisted so far.
“That’s because our ethos is to keep it affordable. I’m not expecting London traders to travel outside London.
To keep costs on the same basis for a Manchester LBB, would, she explains, mean sourcing traders from around Manchester. “And I don’t personally know a lot of the people there that are equivalent to the ‘bedroom designers’ I know in London.
“I’m part of the community here. There’ll be a friend or a TG regular who’ll tell me they’ve started making hats or bracelets, and I’ll look and go, ‘Oh they’re great, you should have a platform where you can sell them’.
“But as soon as we leave London we’re relying on photos for an idea of it — a sense of the brand. And lots of these fledgling businesses aren’t great at social media. I really feel for these new businesses that are relying on it.
“Alex manages our Instagram account, and because she just loves fashion she can post all these images that are within our vibe and attract the right people.
“That’s one of the ways we get the different customer elements to our events: we’re not just showing standard dominatrix photos, we’re showing quirky weird fashion photography and people go, ‘Oh yeah, I like the feel of that’.
“I don’t think London is the be-all and end-all, whatsoever. I just think that we know it. To take Boutique Bazaar out of London, I’d want to find a third person that was the equivalent of Alex or myself in that city and loves fashion like we do — someone who goes out, and not just to fetish parties.
“Alex will go to lot of dress-up events that might appeal to different scenes, and she’ll grab someone from there and be like, ‘Oh my God the fetish scene will love this’.
“So until we have a kind of natural synergy with someone in another city that is that person, I don’t think it would make sense to try to do it outside London.”
Charlotte’s reference to fledgling brands not always being great at social media reminds me of all the instances I notice of designers posting images of outfits without any accompanying info beyond credits for the photographer and model.
The garment’s style name and price would seem to be the most basic info you would want people to see. If, that is, your objective is to sell your work rather than just to post pretty pictures of it.
Charlotte tells me she feels the same, particularly when she’s scrolling on her phone and sees something on social media that she likes the look of.
“If I know what it costs, straightaway I know whether it’s do-able or not — whether it can be in my mind as a possibility or if it’s out of my league. If there’s a link to how I can buy it, I can click and I’m on their site.
“Minutes later I’m trying to work out what I can cut out of my life that month to buy this dress that I simply must have.”
There are fetish businesses that have got this kind of online selling down to an art form, Charlotte admits. “But if you’re not great at it, events like ours let you be the person you are and sell in that way.”
It might seem from everything said so far that Le Boutique Bazaar is aimed squarely at female shoppers. But, says Charlotte, the event by no means ignores the needs of men.
“One of the biggest questions we get at Torture Garden is from men asking, ‘What can I wear?’ Perhaps us girls are more used to dressing up when we go out, whereas with the men it’s often a big step.
“Your first fetish club is intimidating, and to help people who are not sure what to wear, we’ve bulked out the online galleries to give some inspiration and ensure people don’t have those nightmares about showing up at an event in a rubber thong when everyone else is in jeans and t-shirts!
“So LBB does cater to men. When we do curate the event, Alex will make sure there are always some stalls that have stuff for guys — like the headpieces and chest pieces.”
And what about publicising each event in advance? Well, Boutique Bazaar’s two principals are certainly no slouches when it comes to organising suitable photography.
Charlotte says they love working with Andy of Gothic Image, who has a photo studio downstairs at each event, from where he produces countless elegant portraits of models, designers and visitors.
These quickly morph into galleries on the LBB Facebook page, giving a great impression of the kind of people a newbie would encounter on their first visit, as well as providing fab portfolio shots for the event’s participants.
We’ve selected our favourite Gothic Image shots from the London Fetish Weekend event for three galleries on page 1, as well as our November cover and this article’s header images.
And by happy coincidence our cover/banner image — we honestly didn’t know at the time we chose it — features photographer Ayesha Hussain (seen right with fellow house model Eli Li), who shoots Le Boutique Bazaar’s edgy flyer images!
‘We want to show people fashion is fun and it makes sense to change how you’re perceived. Is it not the appeal of fetish to be somebody completely different?’
“Alex has totally styled and looked after our flyers from day one, working with Ayesha, who does great photography,” says Charlotte. “Alex will take a model that’s known from one sort of look and put them in a designer or style they don’t usually wear.
“You might have seen the images of Dani Divine in a blonde wig. She doesn’t look like herself and a lot of people didn’t realise it was her. [See p2 header pic.]
“We like that. We want to show people fashion is fun and it makes sense to change how you’re perceived. And is it not the appeal of the ‘fetish thing’ that you get to be somebody completely different? You get to be an alter ego version of yourself when you go out.
“So we really embrace that. Alex styles them and goes to the shoots and makes sure it’s right for the fet scene but has got more of a fashion element to it. Things like that were really important to us from the start, to separate us from the stereotype fetish imagery.
“We’ve been so lucky, actually, that there have been three or four really good fashion — as opposed to fetish — photographers that we’ve met through LBB. Again, the designers get great portfolio shots.”
Boutiqe Bazaar always has three house models at each event; designers can book slots with them and have up to three outfit changes.
“So you’ll get somebody who is an established fetish model that comes and works for two or three designers over the day.” The models will shoot inside the venue, and often outside too (something that was particularly popular at the LFW event!).
“And as long as they have the subject’s permission, we don’t at all mind people taking pictures on their phones,” adds Charlotte. “Because it’s part of the day, and they can’t do that in a club.”
LBB’s final outing of this year — Le Boutique Bazaar: Evil Xmas — takes place on Sunday November 26 from 13:00 to 19:00 at McQueen, 55 Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4AA. Entrance (cash on the door only) is £7, or just £5 if you click ‘going’ on the event’s Facebook page beforehand.
facebook.com/lbb
facebook.com/lbb/evilxmas
gothic-image.com
facebook.com/ayesha.h
facebook.com/elili
Tags: Accessories, Christmas Gifts, Designers, Fetish Fairs, Latex, Leather, Lingerie, Retail