This coming Saturday sees the first Rubber Cult of 2015 promising a line-up that might persuade you to forgive it for taking place only three times a year.

February 7’s line up at Shillibeer’s features the, designer behind the Am Statik label, slipping into her performance artist’s shoes to present a piece called Luminescence, exploring “lighting, UV and latex”.

In marked contrast, blue latex-clad Carmen Mon Oxide offers perverted opulence with her operatic singing. Carmen’s voice soars as she embodies Plava Laguna from the cult film The 5th Element, and performs The Diva Dance. Don’t be surprised if it leaves her exhausted.

February’s fashion show comes courtesy of Slaughter House Couture. Designer Kirsty Robertson, who specialises in bespoke outfits for the dominatrix fraternity, is a Rubber Cult regular along with many of her clients, and recently designed an own-label latex range for Coco De Mer.

Other live attractions include Adam Electric with his latest performance The Machine Legends, and rubber rope suspension by Ropesluts.

There’ll also be an exhibition of PetteriT‘s surreal fetish photography, a medical corner run by Nurse Redd, a fully equipped dungeon and staffed rubber play booths.

Rubber Cult may have some quirks it’s hard not to smile at, but it remains a unique fetish partying experience in London, in the UK and probably in a great deal of the world beyond.

It combines an agreeable socialising environment (no dancing but plenty of drinking), appropriately-themed entertainment, and probably the tightest and most strictly enforced dresscode of any public fetish event.

Together these elements make it a true celebration of all things latex and rubber, where the audience is as well-dressed as those appearing on its stage.

Rubber Cult takes place at Shillibeers Bar, Carpenter’s Mews, North Road, London N7 9EF from 8pm to 2am on Saturday February 7.

Tickets cost £23 + £2.30 booking fee online, £25 from London shops Atsuko Kudo, Breathless, House of Harlot and Liberation, and £28 on the door.

SEPTEMBER 2014 REPORT

September’s Rubber Cult was marked by, among other things, a colourful contingent of overseas visitors in the crowd, including Ian ‘Boeing Driver’ Dutton and his wife, Shea ‘Sheep Botherer’ Hovey.

The airline theme was echoed by my Copenhagen-based Fetishistas colleague Heidi Patterson, wearing a fab latex Pan Am outfit provided by legendary Canadian FetLifer Ltx4Jay, also there in person.

Travelling even further to attend were an affable young couple from Melbourne. Well all right, they didn’t come all the way from Australia just to be at Rubber Cult, but they assured me it had been a very, very important part of their vacation itinerary!

These people and many others (the venue was comfortably full without being rammed) were treated to several shows on the infamous stage-with-one-light, starting with the first of two performances by Le Snake Fervor.

Any confusion caused by the masculine gender of this artist’s name were quickly dispelled when Le Snake appeared onstage with a reasonably large snake. She was definitely female. I don’t know what sex the snake was.

Lacing Lilith provided the latex fashion show. The models and the clothes were great, as anyone who knows this label would expect. But at one point, not that far into the show, everything pretty much ground to a halt and people were asking, “Has it finished?”

It certainly looked that way, especially when host Kim appeared and introduced designer Paul Miller to the audience. But eventually things recommenced with the arrival of a spike-hooded model who needed assisting onto the stage (because apparently, she couldn’t see where she was going).

Valentina Fetish Doll arrived onstage on crutches and seemed to be having some bladder trouble. Not with her own bladder so much as the one strapped to her outfit