COUCH QUEEN: One of many famous paintings of Masuimi created by artist Olivia De Berardinis during their quarter-century of creative collaboration
Masuimi Max RIP: fetish world pays loving tribute to a legend
FEBRUARY COVER STORY: The death in Las Vegas of fetish supermodel Masuimi Max has prompted outpourings of grief, disbelief and eternal love from around the fetish world. Here, we honour this kink legend with four pages of tributes from many of the key scene figures who knew her, worked with her and/or considered her a friend. THE COMMENTS on pages 2-4 (following Tony Mitchell’s Page 1 intro) are based mainly on Facebook posts in the days immediately following Masuimi’s death on January 25. Some light editing has been applied to condense, clarify or update some comments, and maintain context and consistency. Images except main banner image are from the original social media posts. BANNER, main image: Masuimi in House of Harlot latex by Morat666. Left-hand column, top-bottom: Olivia De Berardinis; Beatrice Neumann; Peter Czernich; Steve Diet Goedde
Masuimi Max: Press reports and social media speculation
Masuimi Max, the iconic performer and actress who started out as a fetish model and rose to become one of the scene’s most successful mainstream crossover figures, has died in Las Vegas aged 45.
Press reports stated that on the morning of Thursday January 25, Masuimi was found at her Las Vegas home by police responding to an early morning emergency call.
Reports since then have all carried much the same statements about the circumstances around the model’s death: no foul play was suspected, her death was being investigated, and no other details were currently available.
The news quickly spread and social media sites were soon awash with expressions of shock and disabelief. And, of course, some understandable curiosity about how Masuimi had died.
MASUIMI AND MORAT in the pic accompanying her announcement on November 15 that the two were no longer husband and wife
Roughly ten weeks before her death, on November 15, Masuimi had announced on Facebook that she and Morat (shown with Masuimi above), whom she’d married in 2006, were “no longer husband and wife” but “always will be best friends”.
The fact of her recent break-up — taken with evidence from posts (since removed) that she was unhappy and the police statement that no foul play was suspected — would likely have been enough to prompt speculation that Masuimi had taken her own life.
But an alternative scenario was also gaining currency. Given that some other recent alt scene deaths had been the result of ingesting poisoned party drugs, was it possible that Masuimi — known to ‘party hard’ — had suffered the same fate?
Had she, people wondered, unwittingly taken cocaine adulterated with a lethal amount of the synthetic opioid Fentanyl?
This possibility remains mere conjecture until investigations have been completed — which could be some way away. But it is a fact that Fentanyl adulteration of recreational drugs has become a massive problem in the States.
And by all accounts, it is also beginning to appear in countries as far away as the UK. So whether or not it was the cause of Masuimi Max’s demise, the general danger it now presents must be considered very real.
Most mainstream media reporting of the tragedy focused on pretty much the same
details of Masuimi’s history when providing background information considered relevant for their readers.
For example, these readers would see that Masuimi — of German-Korean heritage — had been a Playboy model who regularly appeared at Playboy Mansion parties in the early 2000s, and had also modelled for magazines such as Maxim and Bizarre.
Readers were reminded that she had made appearances in a few movies, among them an uncredited role in 2005’s Lee Tamahori-directed thriller xXx: State of the Union starring Samuel L Jackson and Ice Cube. And that she had starred in the 2022 horror movie Protégé Moi and featured in David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
Reports also noted that Masuimi had recently split from her husband, the journalist, photographer and musician Morat (Cameron Mouat). And that she had died just two days before a scheduled performance at the Vegas Chaos anniversary party on January 27.
But for the most part they had little to say about the vast hinterland of her fetish work — the earlier career that had won her iconic and ‘much-loved’ status among kinksters.
This article hopes to offer some balance by reflecting the many tributes paid to Masuimi Max on social media by people from the fetish scene, or with close links to it.
Many of these are the people she regarded as ‘family’ from the early days of her fetish career. They include people such as legendary artist Olivia De Berardinis and famed fetish photographer Steve Diet Goedde, both of whom had worked with Masuimi for around a quarter of a century.
Importantly, our article also includes details of the GoFundMe Masuimi Max Memorial Fund set up by John Feeney, Morat’s bandmate in Las Vegas punk quartet Soldiers of Destruction.
The fund has a target of $80,000 to support funeral and memorial expenses, assist in covering remaining housing expenses, aid in closing her business, and settling any debts with her estate. At the time of writing, it has already raised almost $28,000.
MASUIMI MEMORIAL PRINTS on sale from Steve Diet Goedde have already raised $850 towards her memorial fund (photos: Steve Diet Goedde)
In a separate initiative linked to the memorial fund, photographic collaborator Steve Diet Goedde revealed on February 5 that he had donated $850 — an amount since increased to $1,175 — to the fund from sales of his Masuimi Max memorial prints. Details of the prints offer can be found in Steve’s tribute to Masuimi on page 4 of this article.
Masuimi Max, Skin Two, The Fetishistas and me
– by Fetishistas editor Tony Mitchell
HOUSE MODEL: Masuimi in House of Harlot latex, Fetishistas April 2017 cover (photo: Morat666)
As editor of Skin Two magazine, I was already well aware of the young Masuimi Max by 2000, the year her modelling career officially started (although it really started earlier). In 2001 she did her first latex modelling shoot for the original London-based Inner Sanctum label with hot photo duo James & James (published in Skin Two 36). And she appeared the same year in London at both the Skin Two Rubber Ball and Erotica’s Olympia event.
Masuimi went on to feature in further early-noughties Inner Sanctum shoots that were published as Skin Two editorials in issue 39 (2002) and issue 46 (end of 2003). The latter was shot just days after the model was floored on the stage of the Rubber Ball by an accidental collision with a trapeze artist’s foot during the Ball’s fashion show.
The blow caught Masuimi near her left eye and for some time after this, she sported a visible lump at the point of impact. But being Masuimi, she just got on with the job.
At the first of these Inner Sanctum shoots, I had joined the crew at Ess & Emm in Warwickshire to observe proceedings for the magazine. It was the first time I’d met Masuimi with her then partner Allen Falkner. (Allen later became renowned for his heart-stopping hook suspensions at fetish events, performed to the sound of Johnny Cash’s powerful version of Nine Inch Nails’ song Hurt.)
There wasn’t much time to socialise with the couple in this high-pressure shoot environment. Later, however, an easy friendship with both of them developed.
Mitchell photo-bombed by Max while in Vegas for BondCon 2004 (photo: Gothic Image)
In 2003 I started travelling out to the States on fetish editor business, attending the two BondCon events hosted by Bondage Café’s Jim Weathers and his team in Las Vegas in 2003 and ’04. I remember a dinner with Masuimi and other friends where I was introduced to her party trick: necking enough alcohol to turn her face bright red (an Asian gene thing, she explained) and going seriously cross-eyed.
She needed little encouragement to do stuff like this to put a smile on friends’ faces; people who thought her fierce appearance meant she must be fierce in the flesh were so wrong. She was funny, charming and self-deprecating.
Her fondness for off-the-cuff pranking was brought home to me at 2004’s BondCon, when a bunch of us including Masuimi went out for drinks and dinner at a Star Trek-themed restaurant in Vegas (now gone).
One of its gimmicks was a gigantic blue cocktail served in a fish-bowl-sized glass intended for sharing. Photographer Andy Gothic Image was sitting opposite me with his camera when Masuimi decided to photo-bomb me. Andy captured the moment perfectly — as you can see from his photo.
MASUIMI AND BIANCA embrace colourful latex on the cover of Skin Two 49 in 2004
In 2004 we put Masuimi on the cover of Skin Two 49 with that other emerging fetish superstar, Bianca Beauchamp (see above). The pair were featured inside the mag in a fashion shoot from the studio of fetish video production company GwenMedia, wearing clothes that represented the extent to which latex design had embraced colour since the modern fetish fashion scene had begun in London a decade earlier.
After this, Masuimi’s path and mine would cross at various international events up to and beyond my departure from Skin Two in 2006 and my Los Angeles launch of The Fetishistas in 2007. And even though we met less often in the flesh as more years passed, she continued to appear from time to time in Fetishistas articles, in coverage of events and photography projects (particularly those of Steve Diet Goedde).
However, my favourite Fetishistas appearance by Masuimi has to be when she became the cover star of my April 2017 edition. The photo by hubbie Morat showed her wearing a spikey latex bra top from House of Harlot’s newly-launched Black Widow Collection.
By this time, Masuimi’s renown had spread far beyond the fetish scene that had spawned her — she was by now the queen of alternative and not-so-alternative events in the States, and had a massive following on Instagram. So when I reached out to her about using photos from her HoH photo session to illustrate the Harlot cover story, I wasn’t sure what kind of response I’d receive.
But I shouldn’t have worried. She replied virtually instantly, said she would love to be featured in the article, and OK’d my use of a dozen of Morat’s superb images of her in a selection of black latex styles.
The warmth that I’d first experienced from her in the early noughties had evidently not cooled, and I was left feeling that she was one of those people who, once a friend, would be a friend for life.
But I never imagined that life for her would be cut so tragically short. I don’t think I ever met Morat, but my heart goes out to him for a loss I know has devastated him, following on as it did from the break-up of their marriage just a couple of months before her death.
I know (and you will see in the pages that follow) that a lot of other people who were close to her were also shocked by her death. It has triggered much grief, but also much anger among those who fear the rumoured cause of our losing her will prove to be correct.
TOPPING TONY, below: Masuimi (centre) with fellow models including Kumimonster, Helen Lane and Jean Bardot at BondCon 2004 (photo: Gerry Koehler)
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