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KRYSTINA KITSIS: ECTOMORPH AT 40

All / Archived Covers / Cover Stories / Current Cover / Current Cover Stories / September 3, 2025

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MIRIAM VEIL our September cover star, is also the poster girl for EctoMorph’s new Back to Black collection. Here she wears latex lingerie from the new collection (photo: Darren Birkin)

Wicked, shrinking kink, celeb latex, Bowery, Back to Black

But fans of its artisan designer brands can find many of them at new East London kink fashion emporium Charmskool Showroom, which was opened this year by LBB’s co-founder Alexandra Houston, and has featured EctoMorph latex in a recent promotion.

Torture Garden events have broadened the palette of fetish by embracing a more expansive definition that includes other tactile fabrics. And for me, participating in LBB’s pop-up shopping events re-ignited my ability to engage with a younger fetish audience.

It was great to be back among the more confident attitudes exhibited by youth and the designers who cater for them. I love their exhibitionist displaying of their bodies, their wearing of underwear as outerwear and their bondage-themed outfits that also feature feathers and transparent materials.

Testing the boundaries: Club Wicked, 2003

DAUNTING or inviting, depending on one’s tastes: the heavily-barred entrance to the Sheridans’ Club Wicked under London Bridge

It reminds me of my original love of mixing fabrics with latex. But it seems a long way on from the days back in 2003 when I worked on supplying latex to Club Wicked, run by Brian and Caroline Sheridan.

This couple had tested the boundaries of acceptability when they’d opened a fetish swingers’ club in what had been Cynthia’s Restaurant on Tooley Street, under the southern end of London Bridge.

The Sheridans were very ambitious in wanting to run the club with different themes nightly as well as having a Sunday fetish market.

But the couple’s outspoken views and endeavours to obtain a sex establishment licence received sensationalised coverage in the Press that quickly came to the attention of the venue’s august neighbour, Southwark Cathedral. And as a consequence, Wicked was forced to close.

A more difficult climate for kink culture…

The landscape for fetish in my experience has changed over the last 40 years. Since Covid, the network of kink shops and kink clubs has contracted.

At the same time, the proliferation of kink on the internet (which has substantially replaced print magazines) is experiencing the effects of censorship or complete removal.

Latex models, for example, have found that their social media presence on Facebook or Instagram gets taken down when content is inexplicably interpreted as offensive or said to be breaking the platforms’ rules.

CORONET in Elephant & Castle, once a regular for Torture Garden parties, is one of several big London kink venues now lost to scene events

A backlash against kink is definitely occurring, which is also seen in a reduction of the remaining venues willing to accommodate fetish-related events for fear of breaking licensing laws.

Meanwhile, venues in cities like London are being redeveloped mainly as blocks of flats, which are much more profitable for landlords. All in all, a more difficult climate currently exists for fetish culture.

It is hard to imagine how ubiquitous fetish shops were on high streets in the late 20th Century, given that their number has shrunk to just a handful now.

I could not conceive today of selling latex to a big US department store chain like Nordstrom, as I did in 1988, or seeing EctoMorph on the cover of Women’s Wear Daily in a promotion for the latex collection Nordstrom bought from me.

…but more latex brands sell to celebrities

RITA ORA wears Atsuko Kudo Restricted Pencil Dress, 2015. Kudo pioneered celebs in latex; Kim Kardashian also favoured AK’s light brown look

Yet a number of latex labels — pioneered by Atsuko Kudo in London and Venus Prototype in LA, and now also including brands such as Dead Lotus Couture and Poster Girl in the UK, Vex and Blacklickorish Latex in the USA, and Avellano in Paris — do successfully sell to the celebrity market.

This helps to promote the acceptability of kink, which is ironic as the reason celebrities choose to wear latex is mostly for its shock value.

Many of these celebrities are not conventional fashion model size and have, along with a less critical fashion industry, helped to promote other body shapes.

Through EctoMorph I have always sold to people with different body types and a lot of crossdressers, demonstrating that tight clothing is not only for the stick thin. Our tag line on Instagram is ‘ageless latex design’.

KRYSTINA KITSIS says that EctoMorph has always catered to many different body types, including crossdressers and other trans folk

Inclusivity in general has always been important on the fetish/BDSM scene, which has long regarded gender stereotypes as irrelevant and LGBTQ rights as a guiding principle.

From its origins in 1983 as a Soho club, Skin Two prided itself on creating a culture with its events that was anti-ageist, and that attracted a clientèle from 18 to 80. This is now the norm at most fetish events.

The late Leigh Bowery: transgressive star

LEIGH BOWERY in the latex he wore at 1992’s Skin Two Rubber Ball. Leigh paved the way for others like Grayson Perry (photo: Fergus Greer)

A guest at the first annual Skin Two Rubber Ball in 1992 (the first really large-scale Skin Two party, which attracted several thousand people to Hammersmith Palais on a Monday night!) was the late, great Leigh Bowery, who assimilated fetish themes which he interpreted in his own idiosyncratic way.

His ‘gimp mask’ hoods, usually made from the same (often sequinned) fabric as the rest of his costume, and his collaborations with the legendary Mr Pearl on making corsets were a unique take on fetish that he made his own.

Leigh lived the personality that he became 24/7, and was hugely influential in making an eccentric, iconic personality into one that was so visible and known. His appearance as a sculpture in the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, just being himself in his spectacular outfits, made that being into a spectacle.

He did however trigger the demise of the second Skin Two night Tim and I were organising, which was set to take place as a one-off at Peter Stringfellow’s Hippodrome venue in London’s Soho during a planned Sex Week (in 1987, if I recall correctly).

The Sex Week’s first night was gay night, at which Leigh decided to perform an enema show on stage. The Metropolitan Police, who were determined to clean up Soho and were monitoring the event, pressurised Stringfellow to cancel the rest of the programme. And as a consequence, Skin Two had its Tuesday night extravaganza dropped.

TWO NON-LATEX Leigh Bowery outfits displayed at the recent London exhibition devoted to his life (1961-’94) and work (photo: Krystina Kitsis)

Leigh’s transgressive personalities paved the way for people like artist Grayson Perry who, despite being an excellent potter, may not have won the Turner Prize as his alter ego Claire without the inroads that Bowery had made.

I sold a latex outfit to Grayson in his early days. He displayed a photograph of himself as Claire, wearing it at a talk he gave that I attended in Victoria Miro, his Islington gallery.

Both men were contestants in Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World in 1986. This event had provided a platform for transvestism and sadomasochism, both activities that were considered controversial at the time.

Bowery also collaborated with Michael Clarke and David Holah of Bodymap to design bum-exposing creations that clearly referenced spanking skirts and chaps. It became a two-way process with overlapping influences.

Shops fade away; online saves the day

By this time, fashion was no longer working along top-down filtering lines. Rather, influences were a collage drawn from the social mix of subcultures and fashion history.

Just as the fetish shops that had mushroomed globally in the 1980s and 1990s were curbed by prejudice and escalating property values that saw them replaced by high street chains, the hierarchy of fashion has collapsed.

With branded companies’ collections becoming available in outlet stores, secondhand shops and sales, an ‘altered high street’ phenomenon has emerged.

The internet saved companies like my own EctoMorph, which moved from a largely wholesale-based business to exclusively retail through to its online shop. A direct relationship with customers has steered the company into its current format.

Over the years, EctoMorph collections were regularly added-to, styles morphed and fashion trends incorporated.

The use of laser-cut latex for decorative trims was another departure that I took to make latex look more stylish, and I was one of the first to use the process.

Other companies have gone on to take this to new levels — a notable example of a new technology enabling a more sophisticated product to be fabricated.

Back to Black: revisiting my design roots

MIRIAM VEIL in Little Black Top and Diagonal Studded Skirt – two new styles from EctoMorph Back to Black collection: (photo: Darren Birkin)

My new collection, Back to Black — inspired by Amy Winehouse — is a return to EctoMorph’s original model.

Quintessential qualities of studding, tailored shapes and volume have been included in the new designs, while styles have been updated and fashioned to reflect current trends — including cropped bikers, tight silhouettes and draping.

You can view the whole collection on my new, totally redesigned EctoMorph.com website, and also see a selection of the new styles below and in the gallery, bottom.

Having progressed through countless colours, there seems to be an appetite again for a more monochrome look. It feels new again and is reflective perhaps of the uncertain times in which we live. And I still live in north London! – KRYSTINA KITSIS

BELOW: More Back to Black, l-r: Frilly Full Skirted Dress (photo: Ki Price; model: Nai); Womens Quilted Tailcoat (photo: Krystina Kitsis); Little Black Dress (photo: Darren Birkin; model: Sarah Scarlet)

More Back to Black, l-r: Frilly Full Skirted Dress (photo: Ki Price; model: Nai); Womens Quilted Tailcoat (photo: Krystina Kitsis); Little Black Dress (photo: Darren Birkin; model: Sarah Scarlet)