Fetish model and Playboy cover star turned photographer Ifa Brand can hardly contain her excitement about what the next few weeks promise to bring.

Not only is her first book, Boudoir — a collection of fetish-erotic self-portraits with a ‘bygone era’ vibe, shot entirely on Polaroid — officially out from London publisher Circa Press on December 1.

But Ifa is also one of 17 artists due to be featured later this week in the Paris exhibition InstantArt, devoted entirely to work created on Polaroid or Fuji Instax film. She’ll be attending the opening night party on November 12.

“This year has been an amazing one for me in terms of photography,” she says in one of the many emails we’ve been exchanging for this article. “I learned so much thanks to the Boudoir project.”

She reveals that impending publication of the book also led Dutch Playboy — which had boosted her modelling career when it put her on the cover in 2013 — to publish a preview spread about Boudoir this summer.

“It felt like full circle for me,” she says, “from cover model to having my own work, my own Polaroids, published in the magazine.”

The fact that by an amazing coincidence, the issue came out on her actual birthday “made it one hell of a ‘gift from the universe’ and frankly, unreal,” she adds.

Hailing from the Flemish city of Tongeren, in Belgium’s Limburg province, Ifa Brand attended the Academy of Royal Arts in Antwerp, where she studied for five years and graduated as a master silversmith and jewellery designer.

Her modelling began as a hobby during her teens, when her taste for dressing in gothic attire led to opportunities as a goth model.

“Along the way I started to develop my modelling style, venturing away from the goth style into glamour and fetish,” she explains. “My personal style was also changing, moving away from gothic clothing — still keeping the black but no longer the long velvet dresses.”

Full heavy rubber for first latex shoot

Ifa’s first latex shoot was with Belgian photographer Kris Saelen, who had “some amazing latex outfits for me to try on, including dresses but also a full heavy rubber outfit”.

“We started with the dresses and ended with the heavy rubber outfit, which was a full bodysuit paired with corset, long gloves and a wonderful horned face-mask by Dayne Henderson,” she recalls.

“This made my interest in latex grow, and around this time (2012-2013), I started buying my own latex outfits and going to fetish parties such as Fetish Evolution in Essen, Germany, where I also did several catwalks for latex designers like Brigitte More.”

Initially Ifa treated fetish parties as a way to dress up in latex and have a good time with friends, rather than to expand her modelling career.

“Although I did get to know some really cool photographers who I worked with over the years to come — like Jacco Breedveld (aka coJac) and Phoebus Kalista.

“I started to expand more towards glamour modelling and slowly introducing topless and nude shoots into my portfolio as my confidence grew.

“In 2013 I had my modelling breakthrough, scoring the cover of Dutch Playboy magazine, which enabled me to work more abroad. I modelled for a couple of years but never felt satisfied.”

Her dissatisfaction, she says, centred around not being able to represent her true identity, and seemingly falling between styles. “I was alternative, but not alternative enough. Fetish, but not in a typical sense.”

When I ask if she can expand on this, what she tells me suggests she was ahead of her time in the circles in which she was then moving.

“Due to my interest in different styles from classic glamour Playboy nudes to fetish, my style as a model was not always so definable for photographers.

Lingerie with harnesses ‘unrelatable’

“I loved to combine classic black lingerie sets with leather harnesses or latex accessories. And while you see this all the time now on Instagram, back around 2014 this really wasn’t ‘fashionable’, or something a lot of photographers could relate to.

“Most of them did not understand the combinations I was making in terms of outfits and style. It bothered me when photographers told me how I should look, pose, behave. Telling me no to red lips, no to precious lingerie and all the things I loved,” she explains.

As I know from my own decades of working as an editor and/or writer with photographers on shoots, there are often only two possible outcomes with models who have their own strong ideas about how things should look.

Either the photographer accepts their input as part of a welcome creative collaboration, or they are damned as ‘difficult’ for not taking direction. I ask Ifa if she was aware of photographers ever regarding her as ‘awkward’.

Her response, both detailed and carefully considered, gradually takes the conversation into darker territory that she later says she has not really talked about before.

“I worked with a lot of photographers, from amateur to semi-professional and professionals. In the beginning, modelling was a great creative outlet alongside my design-based education as a jewellery designer.

“I did many shoots and expanded my portfolio quickly, gaining more experience along the way and trying to diversify by mixing styles.

“On a personal level I gained a lot of confidence travelling solo abroad, arranging my own shoots, managing time, communication and organisation skills that I take with me to this day.

Great shoots vs creepy encounters

“I started doing more workshops and portfolio-building days for photographers. I did many great shoots and had lots of fun although I was not spared from creepy encounters.

“I remember a particular workshop in London where, between sets, I was having small talk with a photographer, but I should say this photographer was having the conversation mainly with my boobs, as he kept staring into my cleavage. All the time.

“He didn’t even look me in the eyes which made me feel very uncomfortable and objectified. This feeling kept on returning throughout the years.