Shiri Zinn, who stirred up the sex toy industry some 20 years ago with her luxury ‘designer dildos’, has just launched a new range of pleasure products likely to appeal to many fetish and BDSM fans.

Called Tribal, the range includes a selection of colourful and beautifully finished items suitable for bondage and BDSM play. The chosen name reflects the use throughout the range of decorative African glass beading in vivid geometric patterns.

With the exception of her ballgags (intended only as art pieces or decorative neck wear), all Tribal pieces follow this designer’s ethos of offering luxury quality combined with erotic functionality.

The current range includes collars/chokers, strap-on harnesses (available with or without matching dildos), bondage cuffs, eyemask-style blindfolds and an extendable leg-spreader bar.

A feature likely to increase appeal for many potential customers is that almost the entire Tribal range uses vegan leather.

Everything except her strap-on harnesses (currently available only in Nappa, aka soft lambskin) is fabricated from top quality black or coloured faux leather in either silky smooth or faux ostrich (dimpled) finish.

Shiri Zinn: 2002’s first encounter

I first encountered Shiri Zinn nearly two decades ago when she approached me about the possibility of some coverage for her posh dildos in Skin Two magazine (which I then edited).

A recent postgraduate of London’s Central St Martins School of Art (which had produced latex designers like Robin Archer and Stephen Fuller), Shiri had thought we might be interested in her work even though it was not ‘fetish’ in the conventional sense.

Boasting two BA Honours degrees — one in Fine Arts and one in Fashion Design with Marketing — plus a Masters in Jewellery for Fashion, Shiri had created a range of glass dildos combining erotic function with the sort of high-end aesthetics only a master jeweller could impart to such an item.

The unprecedented sense of exclusive luxury she had brought to a hitherto rather pedestrian category of erotic implements very much chimed with the design principles we admired at Skin Two.

Consequently, in our 40^th issue published in the summer of 2002, Shiri Zinn became the first (and perhaps the only) dildo designer to grace the magazine’s pages during my tenure.

And now, a mere two decades later, I find myself showcasing her work again, this time on The Fetishistas.

2021: this time it’s proper pervy

But now we’re talking about items that are intended to appeal to fetish and BDSM tastes.

In her new Tribal range, it’s possible to see parallels between Shiri’s bold use of colour — even the black pieces sparkle with colour from the decorative beading — and the way latex clothing design has increasingly embraced colour in the last 20 years.

But this, as far as Shiri is concerned, is nothing more than coincidence, since she has “never been influenced” by trends in fetish fashion. She says:

“Colour has always been my thing in design, if you look at my life’s work over the last 23 years (the age of my brand), and even before as a fine artist!

“My palette is highly coloured to the extreme, yet always with the simplicity of large areas of flat colour. I was very influenced by Cubism. I painted in much the same way!”

Tribal’s use of colour is, she says, far more related to her consistent appreciation and use of bright colour in general.

Although she has just added black to the new Tribal range, it is primarily to cater for those who prefer black’s classic fetish appeal.

Why the choice of vegan leather?

What made Shiri choose vegan leather for most items in this collection?

Actually, she explains, soft vegan leather is more durable than Nappa (aka Napa), and she would prefer to use it for all Tribal pieces rather than “sanction killing hundreds of lambs to make the new collection”.

But at the moment, the smaller minimum order quantities available on Nappa enable her to make less stock than she would have to make using faux leather. The only other real leather item she still makes is her Limited Edition Snakeskin Whip.

“If I ever went ‘mass’ on such items I’d choose vegan every time,” she insists, “but for now my straps are in lambskin. I have in the recent past made vegan straps but had to buy larger stock, which did not suit me.

“I’ve also found, if focusing on quality of vegan material, there is absolutely no difference from Nappa leather these days, as one can get vegan versions that are as soft as silk!

“This is also important to me as a designer, as I do not want clients to have anything inferior in quality if I can help it! So I’ll continue buying some real leather until the tipping