Headlining event of this year’s London Fetish Weekend at the start of October, ZDR Dollhouse was another colourful collaboration between LFW hosts Team Absolute and Zara DuRose’s ZDR organisation.

Taking place at King’s Cross venue Scala — London location of choice for ZDR and used for some Torture Garden events too — the Ball marked the next stage in the development of ZDR’s Dollhouse-themed night following its earlier launch in Brighton.

Any doubts about how the Dollhouse theme might be interpreted were quickly dispersed on arrival at Scala’s first-floor bar.

This brightly lit space allows you to catch your breath and get your bearings before hitting the dark interior — the main auditorium with its dancefloor and stage where the shows take place.

Zara generally makes a point of putting some kind of installation — either a purely visual spectacle or something with interactive possibilities — in one corner of this bar area.

And for this ZDR Dollhouse party, the emphasis was clearly on Barbie-ism.

Near the top of the stairs leading up from the front door was a human-sized Barbie ‘display box’, ready to accommodate individuals who fancied elevating their ‘living Mattel doll’ fantasies to the next level.

And there turned out to be plenty of those during the course of the night!

Next to it, a larger, walk-in space entered through an elliptical, doll-themed ‘picture frame’ had obviously been designed to accommodate groups who might want to pose together for photos.

BACKDROPS FOR DIY SOUVENIR PIX

It was a sign of the times — and good thinking by the evening’s hosts — that both these structures were there specifically for guests to take pictures in appropriately-themed settings.

This was the antithesis of the ‘no photography’ mindset of more traditional fetish events, and seemed totally in keeping with the exhibitionistic streak that ZDR seems to bring out in its patrons.

Photo-pass-carrying ’togs like myself were as attracted to these convenient backdrops as the evening’s numerous camera-phone-wielding partygoers were.

Hence, in my two ZDR Dollhouse People galleries below, you’ll find the majority of audience members were shot in one or both of these purpose-built sets.

My apologies, if the background pinks, reds and oranges become a bit repetitive in my 50-plus images of the crowd. But that’s how most people wanted to be photographed, and it made sense to go with the flow!