The relationship between fashion and sex toys in five examples How the objects of pleasure arrived on the catwalks

Sex toys are totems and taboos, they are design products that in recent decades have carved out a space for themselves in the world of communication and in high fashion. In the book Fashion as Cultural Translation: Signs, Images, Narratives Patrizia Calefato tells us that there was a time when fashion and pornography shared the same semiotic vision of the sex toy, a time when sex toys beckoned from one side to the other, and were invested with a notable symbolic charge. They were metonymies, they represented sexual liberation, a way to go against traditionalism and censorship. Today this is still partly the case, but at the same time sex toys have settled among our cultural references, partly due to pornography, partly due to the sex-positive current of feminist inspiration. Perhaps it is time to say that our imaginary has changed and has become aware of the fact that these objects of pleasure have ceased to be ‘toys’ and have become (but they always have been) ‘objects’. 

Even some forms of soft-porn entertainment have been sources of inspiration for fashion, we can think of burlesque, striptease or lap-dance shows, and how, for example, they were translated in 1993 by Vivienne Westwood in the hyper erotic Café Society collection in Paris and, more recently, in the second Savage X Fenty show, which saw Demi Moore in lingerie surrounded by dancers and fishnets. Fashion has shown us how much pornography is linked to language and communication, in form as well as in substance, and today we live in an era that is bringing to light all those sexual inclinations that were once repressed from a social and regulatory point of view, thanks to both online porn and the rise of the LGBTQIA+ rights movement. But how were these sex toys, once bound to deviant spheres, used on the catwalks?

Versace introduces BDSM

The first big case dates back to Fall 1992, when Gianni Versace presented Miss S&M. The title of the show was already a whole program: he referred to sadomasochistic practices, often abbreviated to SM, S / M or S&M. This is where the whole system of references -  that still accompanies us today when we pronounce the name Versace - is formed, as Gianni said, "there is the American cowboy with the European baroque": the bondage theme, including belts and buckles, is loaded on clothes in black, gold and red, recalling an aggressive, playful and disruptive sexual image, brought to the extreme thanks to the most famous supermodels of the time (such as Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer).

The Japanese designer, specialized in couture latex design, said in an interview that according to her, prior to this meeting between queens (respectively of the camp and of the United Kingdom), "latex was very underground, this encounter brought it into a more mainstream context, redefining it”. 

Later, over the course of the decade, latex was used on the catwalks of many other brands, from Valentino to Marc Jacobs, from Chanel to Dolce & Gabbana (and of the latter we can also remember the AW 2007’s leather whip for spanking). The Kardashian sisters took care of making latex the symbol of the 2000s and perhaps it is no coincidence that today, in the great Y2K nostalgia, this material is re-proposed; an example of all is the coordinated Balmain outfit by Kourtney and Kim for the 2020 Balenciaga fashion show in Paris.

Streetwear discovers Tenga

Since 2010, the Japanese brand of male sex toys, Tenga, has launched the Respect Yourself project, a campaign to raise awareness on AIDS and raise funds for medical research. In December 2012 (the 1st of December is in fact World AIDS Day) they launched a new collaborative edition with various brands including HUF, a skate and streetwear brand, with which they created a special edition of the Vacuum Cup, “FUCK IT”. Similarly, Tenga in 2017 also collaborates with Anti Social Social Club for a new cup.

Still on the streetwear theme, we cannot fail to mention Supreme's SS21, in which the I'm not sorry t-shirt was presented with a teddy bear wearing a strap-on and holding a whip.

From Gucci Orgasmique to Love Parade

The latest case is the Gucci’s one. We had already talked about how the fashion house has repeatedly challenged the concept of "gender" and repeatedly confronted itself with sexuality.

In AW 2019 Alessandro Michele played with collars with studs, halfway between punk, fetish, and French collars of the 18th century, but he also explored the theme of defense through masks. Masks that recall Eyes Wide Shut and the BDSM world, but also explore deeper themes such as that of "changing sexual orientation, one of the most difficult masks to wear". «The mask», “Lallo” explains, «always hosts a tension between divergent impulses: exhibition and concealment, manifestation and protection, vanity and modesty. The mask is a form».

In SS20 comes Gucci Orgasmique, again with that latex and whips also present in the "Aria" collection hacked by Balenciaga for the hundredth anniversary. In this latest show, the leather harnesses had to refer to the artisan origins of Guccio Gucci, when he sold "equestrian" leather goods and, in particular, saddles; but it was impossible to avoid sexual references, partly because harnesses have always been such connoted accessories (and that of Louis Vuitton, designed by Virgil Abloh for Timothée Chalamet at the 2019 Golden Globes, has only strengthened this imagery for the GenZ), partly because a copy of Freud's Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex also appears in the photos of the campaign.

The BDSM aesthetic, and the whole world it includes, is the one in which the objects of pleasure have more space to act and, at the same time, it is the one that is most repressed and moved to the margins of society. Over the years fashion has pulled out hints of it, and it is one of those courses and recurrences of history, which took its first steps in the 70s with Vivienne Westwood and Mugler, has been transformed into art with the shots of Steven Meisel and Helmut Newton, and eventually entered high fashion from Helmut Lang onwards.

But, as we have noted, this public relationship with marginal sexuality is nothing new, it is a fluctuating movement that spans the last 50 years, because - as Andrea Zanin, Canadian writer and BDSM educator pointed out - “basically, the mainstream has always been, and will always be, interested in things that are on its own edges” and “keeps rediscovering kink as being that edge”.