SKIN TWO AT STALLIONS: LAUNCH NIGHT AND BEYOND
SHOCK TACTICS: Designer Jane Kahn and Sean Crawford, aka Tok of performers Tik and Tok (photo: Derek Ridgers)
Launch night at Stallions finally arrives
Finally arriving at Stallions for the Skin Two launch, we navigated the steep stairs down to the basement with growing anticipation. The stairs made the act of entering feel portentous — one could easily imagine one was actually descending to the dark depths of a dungeon!
At the little ‘front desk’ at the bottom of the stairs, membership cards were being issued. To our delight, the ‘Skin Two Member 001’ card had been reserved for Bev — under her pen name of Betty Page, naturally!
From the very start, Skin Two club rules specified that to be allowed in, you had to conform to its fetish dresscode. As veterans of the Blitz and other dress-up clubs, its hosts understood the value of this to a fetish club.
It would not only enable clubbers to recognise others as part of a like-minded community, but would also deter the likes of casual voyeurs, or tabloid journalists looking for exposés, since such people would be less likely to make the ‘outfit effort’ needed to meet such a dresscode.
This proved to be a prescient policy, widely adopted by good fetish event promoters ever since, because it works — most of the time.
Once past front desk scrutiny, there was a right turn into the actual club space. The Stallions venue was basically one small space divided into various even smaller sections.
There was a little bar, a DJ booth, a tiny dance floor doubling as a performance space and — somewhat incongruously, a large fishtank in the centre. There were also toilets of course, and for some reason the ladies’ became an unofficial chill-out and chat space where some of us spent more time than we spent in the main club space.
Daniel James adds style to the club mix
DANIEL JAMES and Lesley Beaumont wearing two of his early creations at Skin Two, 1983
The crowd at this first night and for a considerable time beyond were dressed in every available variation on tight, black and shiny (almost all the clothing was black, as colour was not yet ‘a thing’ in fetish attire).
There was some rubber from the start for sure, but also lots of leather, PVC and wetlook from She-An-Me, corsets and seamed stockings, and heels from trans outfitters Cover Girl.
The rubber came from the firms mentioned earlier, from some sex shops’ moulded ranges, or in a few cases, no doubt, from Westwood & McLaren’s earlier SEX range of ‘rubberwear for the office’.
Initially, though, there was nothing else that came close in style to the rubber dress that Skin Two co-founder Bill had made for his girlfriend Lesley. And this was quickly noticed by an early visitor to the club: Stephane Raynor, owner of famous alt-fashion organisation Boy London.
Steph was so impressed by Lesley’s outfit that he invited Bill to put a selection of his rubber designs into Boy. This was an important endorsement of the Daniel James fashion brand’s potential, incentivising its creator to design his first latex capsule collection.
The young designer had already been experimenting with various qualities of latex and ways of structuring garments that would give them the sophisticated look he was seeking for a fashion range. I remember his progress in this area being the subject of considerable interest at the club.
To achieve the desired structure, he wanted to use raised, stitched seams rather than the flat, glued seams beloved of fetish outfitters. But stitching with conventional thread was problematic — it didn’t flex with the body’s movements and tended to tear the rubber when the seams were stressed.
His major breakthrough came when he found a source of the stretch thread used for sewing dancewear. This, combined with
latex robust enough to withstand more stress when the clothes were worn, allowed him to start creating a whole range of stylish garments under the Daniel James label.
Incidentally, Bev’s original lace-backed Daniel James dress also made a striking debut in New York during Skin Two’s early months, when she and I visited the US for a working holiday. It included an ecstatic visit with Marc Almond and legendary NYC DJ Anita Sarko to the Hellfire Club, where a group of punters paid ‘enthusiastic tributes’ to Bev’s total dominatrix look.
Who were Skin Two’s early patrons?
Skin Two itself attracted a wide age range from the very start. There were professional and lifestyle dominatrixes, sub and dom men and lots of couples who were trying out their shared kink interests in a more public setting for the first time.
I recall that one of my earliest impressions was just how friendly everybody was — including dominatrix types. Up to this point I’d only met one genuine professional dominatrix (Angel Stern, in New York), and based on her, had presumed they would all be aloof and uninterested in social engagement.
I remember putting the sociability I encountered at Skin Two down to: 1) the dresscode really working, allowing clubbers to feel reassured that everyone else in the room was also a real perv; and 2) this shiny, happy crowd being just the most wonderful affirmation that ‘we were not alone’.
Given the current prominence of trans issues in the mainstream, I think it’s also worth noting that Skin Two in 1983 was naturally trans-friendly, from the start attracting people from different parts of the trans community (although the term ‘trans community’ was not yet in use).
Prominent among fetish veterans at the opening night was AtomAge’s founder John Sutcliffe (below), the evening’s guest of honour who had loaned a copy of his Under Three Layers latex film for screening there.
The club also provided a first encounter with two people who would subsequently become regarded as one of the kink scene’s truly legendary D/s couples: Mistress Clare and her partner Brian.
I actually first chatted with Clare in the ladies’ loo, where she had sought refuge after her latex catsuit had split across her back from shoulder to waist (possibly as a result of an overly energetic whipping session).
This was when I learnt that tight latex clothing could suffer catastrophic damage without warning if a weak spot in the rubber was subjected to enough strain. It was the most literal demonstration of ‘wear and tear’ imaginable!
ATOMAGE’S JOHN SUTCLIFFE: guest of honour at Skin Two launch, where his film was screened
As the newest and most envelope-pushing club in London, Skin Two was bound to appeal to all manner of young music, media and creative types who had some interest or involvement in ‘alternative sexuality’.
Among music scene visitors were Some Bizzare supremo Stevo, Soft Cell’s Mark Almond and Dave Ball, and Psychic TV’s Genesis P-Orridge. New Order’s Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner, Siouxsie with Banshees Steve Severin and Budgie, Adam Ant and guitarist pal Marco Pirroni were just a few of the other music biz celebs seen there.
Supermodel Yasmin LeBon and notorious ‘madam’ Cynthia Payne also dropped by, while Steve Beech was one of a number attending the original Skin Two inspired to found their own clubs — in his case, Der Putsch and Madame Venus.
Photographer regulars included Peter Ashworth (the club’s original publicity photographer); Bob Carlos Clarke (who went on to enjoy a substantial creative partnership with Daniel James); Derek Ridgers (documenter of youth subcultures) — see galleries below; and Krystina Kitsis (RCA postgrad, EctoMorph founder and co-host of later Skin Two events) — galleries on p3.
Derek Ridgers: I became a trusted Skin Two photographer
DEREK WRITES:
I first met David Claridge (co-creator of the original Skin Two) at Steve Strange and Rusty Egan’s Bowie Night at Billy’s in 1978.
David was a DJ and a big face on the nascent New Romantic scene at that time.
After the huge success of Bowie Night and then, later on, the Blitz Club (1979-1980), David was looking to start a club night of his own. He was a particularly engaging and friendly chap and he was often bending my ear about his plans.
The first venture of his that I heard about was The Great Wall in 1981. It was a sparsely attended and not very successful Eastern-themed club night on Oxford Street.
Soon after that, he told me he wanted to start a rubber fetish club.
At that time, I had no real idea what a rubber fetish club would entail. Or indeed, even what a rubber fetish was exactly. But it sounded intriguing. So I rocked up to the opening night of the Skin Two club in January 1983.
I turned up in my usual club gear of that time — Levis, cardigan and open neck shirt.
Skin Two was situated in what was, the rest of the week, a gay club called Stallions. It was down a grimy back alley in Soho. The club itself was small and very dark. To my mind the atmosphere on that first night was rather dark too. David and his partner in crime, Billy, were friendly enough but that was as far as it went.
There weren’t so many people there but those that were, I suppose, must have been serious fetishists, with the accent on ‘serious’. They didn’t seem such a cheery bunch. But I guess no one really knew exactly what to expect.
It seemed to me, they were just standing around waiting for somebody to actually do something. There was a strong smell of rubber mixed with that of the oil they use in smoke machines. The DJ played Venus In Furs and, if I recall correctly, Bela Lugosi’s Dead, which suited the ominous atmosphere perfectly.
I got the distinct feeling that my presence with a camera was not very welcome. Later on in the night, I had this confirmed when some bloke dressed all in leather came over, grabbed me by the throat and offered to sort me out, should I point my camera in his direction.
(It’s for this reason that all my photographs from that night are taken in either the dark corridor by the toilets or upstairs around the entrance. I preferred the dark corridor anyway but it was so dark that I really couldn’t see very much at all. I had to guess the focusing).
Despite the threats, I came back the week after. And for quite a few weeks after that. And also when the club had to change its name to Maitresse.
Gradually most of the clientèle came to accept me. I assured them I wasn’t there to take photographs for The News Of The World. Some even became good friends.
BEV aka BETTY PAGE in her Skin Two clubbing latex, 1983 (photo: Derek Ridgers)
I’ve never been a fetishist myself. Anyone seeing me in a club might assume I was a secondary school geography teacher who’d taken a wrong turn. But there was definitely something that drew me back, week in, week out. And, I admit, it was never just about the photography.
When fetish clubs went overground in the ‘90s and you had a couple of thousand people once a month going to Torture Garden or Submission, and rubberwear was in all the high fashion magazines, it was great. In my humble opinion some of those clubs were the absolute best clubs ever.
But I’m still a little nostalgic for the original which, for a short while, felt dangerous and ever so slightly illicit.
BELOW: Inside and outside the original Skin Two club, 1983 – 30 images by DEREK RIDGERS.
CLICK /TAP either preview to open its gallery, then click/tap any thumbnail to start slideshow
Tags: Community, Fetish History, Fetish Pioneers, Skin Two
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