My model pal Sue Scadding (seen in the banner above), my then partner William and I were excited at the prospect of a new club called Skin Two being launched by Daniel James (whom we knew as Bill at that time) and David Claridge at the end of January 1983.

Bill and David were both friends of Sue and had arranged for her to have a photo shoot with fashion and music photographer Peter Ashworth for a forthcoming single that Sue was expecting to release imminently.

But the single’s release was delayed (it was not actually released until years later) so the image (in B&W) was used instead to promote the launch of the Skin Two event, and the original colour version became the front cover of an issue of AtomAge International magazine.

ASHWORTH’S 1982 shoot with Sue Scadding was used (in B&W) to promote the Skin Two Club’s launch in January 1983, while the colour original was used for this AtomAge International cover

Sue, William and I were seasoned clubgoers. having gone through reggae, northern soul, disco and punk nights — anything as long as we could dance.

As lovers of night life we had followed Bill through his various club incarnations, and this next launch, we envisioned, was going to be spectacular.

At that point I knew about fetish clubs only from doing postgrad research into fetish-related material, and from seeing gay men wearing rubber at clubs like Heaven, or punks in fetishwear on the streets.

For punks, fetish gear was worn to cause people shock and offence. But seeing people who wore latex because they liked it and felt good wearing it was going to be a different experience.

Maybe a shock element was there for the latter group too. But it was not intended to offend; rather to have the opposite effect of seduction and allure. A positive rather than negative experience, not confrontational but back to its original intention as sex clothing.

I was at the time doing a research degree on the connection between sexuality and fashion at the Royal College of Art, and I was particularly interested in subcultures.

For me, subcultures were originators of a particular style that defined their tribe, and clothing was one of the social indicators of their difference from mainstream society.

Their styles did of course eventually filter into mainstream culture, especially after being picked up by the fashion industry, which would diffuse the original meaning as expressed by the subculture and turn the ‘look’ into a fashion trend.

Plus, the look was adopted by followers who may not have been proponents of the original tribe, but came onboard by sympathising with the sentiments expressed, or decided to use the look to express something else in themselves.

My research looked at the way fetish was represented in the high class worlds of fashion photographers Helmut Newton and David Bailey.

HELMUT NEWTON’s use of fetish-erotica in his fashion photography, as featured in White Women (1976), was the polar opposite of the domestic snaps found in the pages of AtomAge

Both men used the edgy, seductive themes of fetish on beautiful women, dabbling with themes of master and slave to compose iconic images that were ultimately used to sell an idea and a product.

I also came across more underground images of ‘real’ people in the pages of AtomAge, which featured subjects who were not professional models, posing in domestic settings. These images were more outrageous and bizarre to the untrained eye.

I wasn’t a participant at that stage. But the original Skin Two Club opened my eyes to a whole, previously unknown world that would change the course of my life forever.