EctoMorph at 40

The public launch of the company took place not long after Woodward, who published the first edition of his Skin Two magazine in 1984.. Together he and I decided to co-host a new series of Skin Two nights, the first of which set for July 1985, would also provide the launchpad for EctoMorph. I had long been a frequent clubber; it was in my blood – and I had been a regular patron of 1983’s original Skin Two club. Our new event was held at the Embassy Club (earlier the birthplace of the Batcave goth club) in Old Bond Street, the beating heart of high fashion in the capital.

After its debut at the Embassy, our new Skin Two Club became a weekly event initially taking place at Soundshaft, a small venue attached to (and owned by ) London’s famous Heaven venue. It functioned as a gay club on other nights and had recently been refurbished with cages and fetish equipment.

Fashion week provides an early break.
Fashion was very hierarchical at the time, a state imposed by the organisers of Fashion Week which took place in Olympia with big name designers on the ground floor, the high street brands above and young designers at the top. A vetting system was in place, and as a young designer, I was lucky enough to be included. This was a first for latex alongside fashion companies like Bodymap, Boy, Fake London and English Eccentrics, to name but a few. And so started the flow of latex fashion into boutiques overseas as well as in Britain, and the spread of fetish clothes as a fashion concept.

Prior to this, latex in shops had mainly been found in red light districts or segregated zones; exceptions were She An Me near Olympia and a brief appearance from 1974 to 1976 in Westwood and McLaren’s shop Sex on the Kings Road. A boutique on the King’s Road was also the first to sell my collection of EctoMorph latex. Quasimodo provided glam and street-style fashion to the music industry and was a Mecca for overseas buyers during fashion week.

My selling point has been to filter fetish through fashion, and Quasimodo was perfectly placed to blend latex into their range of funky pinstripe, fake fur animal print suits and sequin dresses. Being staffed by Page Three girls (models from the Sun newspaper’s daily pin-up pages) and frequented by stylists meant it got a lot of media coverage in the pages of Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire as well as the tabloids.

A feature in the Press would generate a huge run on any style shown. Such was the desirability of the garments depicted that one of the publicity boards featuring EctoMorph latex that Vogue had placed in Quasimodo for use as a window display backdrop was stolen by someone — a fetish enthusiast, one presumes — who sent a taxi to collect it under some false pretext. The shop assistant naïvely believed this story and the poster was never seen again.

The presence of latex in a high street boutique prompted continuous coverage, especially in the tabloids, which would sensationalise the wearing of ’risqué’ clothing by band singers and soap actors, thus helping to spread the concept of fetish. More fetish clubs began to open, providing a platform and venue for the wearing of these new creations.

Clubs Catalogues, Photographers & Fashion influences.
Few people attended our Soundshaft nights, apparently put off by the hardcore decor. It was too early for such an explicit vibe. It also attracted the wrong kind of personality. Tim frequently tells people that I saved him from one clubber later exposed as a serial killer! Michael Lupo (Michele del Marco Lupo) was a regular visitor to these events and took a liking to Tim.

I had to pretend to be Tim’s girlfriend to fend Lupo off, thereby possibly saving his life. (Incidentally, Grace Lau, Tim’s photographer partner on Skin Two magazine, took many naked photos of Lupo, alone in her Archway Studio at the time).

Skin Two club v2 settles in at Zeeta’s
Mark Fuller, who’d owned the Embassy Club, had his new club, Zeetas in Putney. Subsequently, offered Tim and me an alternative to operate from and Skin Two never looked back. Ironically the decor in Zeetas was chintzy sofas and was tiny in comparison with Heaven but it struck a chord with the clientèle. Skin Two at Zeetas gave me an audience and a location where I could promote my EctoMorph range. These were pre-internet, pre-social media days. Publicity for clothing brands at that time was obtained by producing catalogues and direct contact with the buying public.

Leaflets would be handed out to potential customers — an activity that, a decade or so later (2006), was turned into a business by Handjobs Media. Handjobs’ Michaela van Es and her gang could be seen at the end of fetish club nights handing out goody bags containing company flyers to exiting clubbers.

Ectomorph catalogues and Skin Two Germany
EctoMorph produced five catalogues, the first three of which were in black and white, and these functioned as mail order catalogues. Not long after producing my first catalogue, I met a German fan of Skin Two magazine who expressed an interest in starting a fetish magazine of his own.

This man was called Peter Czernich, and he did a deal with Tim Woodward to license the Skin Two name in order to launch Skin Two Germany. Its first edition in 1987 consisted of a few original German-language editorial pages wrapped around the whole of my first EctoMorph catalogue.

Apart from this being hugely flattering, it brought me to the awareness of a new German audience. Plus it gave Peter an inroad into magazines and latex clothing. He was an excellent photographer — something that became evident when he published his own images in Skin Two Germany and later <> and Marquis. Czernich was also my German agent, and as such placed EctoMorph in many of the sex shops that proliferated there. Germany was already a huge market for ‘traditional’ fetish clothing and publications.

Visiting German locations with Peter, I could see the influence us Brits were having there through the new wave of London clubs, magazines like Skin Two and designers like myself who were altering the landscape of fetish. The German scene underwent a similar evolution to that which took place in the UK. Today Germany hosts what is widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious multi-day fetish gathering — the German Fetish Ball Weekend in Berlin — as well as many other fetish events large and small.

The production of EctoMorph catalogues led me to collaborations with many photographers, who all brought different perspectives to the sessions. Among them were Trevor Watson, Alistair Thain, Derek Ridgers, Wilfrid Moulin, Aidan McCarthy, Keital, Kash Rafique and Darren Birkin, to name but a few.

From my early days I had always been influenced by photographers such as Helmut Newton and David Bailey. I loved their slick fashion images that incorporated fetish themes. I wanted to do something similar but make it available to people like myself and add my own perspective, along with that of the photographers who also brought their own vision to the portrayal of the collections. It was always a collaborative experience.

At this time there was an evolving interest in health and body consciousness that had been popularised by Lady: Lisa Lyon, a 1983 book collaboration between Robert Mapplethorpe and female body-builder Lisa Lyon. I had seen this exhibition of work at the ICA gallery. Grace Lau and myself collaborated on an article about the emerging fetish scene and the changing body awareness for Zeitgeist magazine. (1983)

Latex fitted perfectly into the new direction fashion was taking. I chose the name EctoMorph, to reflect this zeitgeist, taking it from the term for a tall, thin, lean body type coined by American Psychologist William Sheldon, who developed a system of categorising human body types.

New technology involving weaving elastane (aka spandex or Lycra) into cloth allowed production of new stretch fabrics for tight clothing, which were seized upon by designers who had aims other than creating gym wear.The most notable advocate of this new trend was Azzedine Alaia, who created structured but tight clothing that clearly referenced fetish. I was a huge fan of his clothes, owning several treasured pieces which I wore until they fell apart. As with latex that has a limited life span, Alaia’s beautiful stretchy garments eventually — instead of supporting the body — lost their elasticity and sagged.

I incorporated these influences into my collections by producing leggings, shorts, swimsuits/bodies, tight-fitting dresses and skirts and of course catsuits. But I have to admit to being a rather late convert in creating my first catsuit.

From durable catsuits to vacuum suits
I regarded catsuits as a stereotypical look embraced by traditional latex companies like Sealwear, and as my interest was in fashion, I didn’t see the point of perpetuating this look. But Thomas Schneider, owner of Highlights, one of Germany’s first new wave fetish shops, persisted in badgering me to make both male and female catsuits. He knew he could sell them to his clients, especially pro dommes who wanted them for their studios.

I eventually acquiesced , catsuits went on to become one of my bestselling products and I got to really like them once I saw them beautifully photographed by Wilfrid Moulin in Paris. The fact that I stitched them made them durable and popular and I still make them today with very little change in design. My reputation for durability led to collaborating with British brand Serious Kit: I make the latex structures for their high-end vacuum suits. This has been an interesting collaboration as it took me into unfamiliar territory and away from fashion.

Working with latex for 40 years has not been without its challenges — a perennial one of which (as for any designer) is the need to constantly come up with new ideas. Working with the same fabric is a constant creative challenge. By stitching latex I have tried to give EctoMorph a unique look to distinguish it from other companies.I had originally toyed with becoming an academic; I wrote frequently for Zeitgeist Magazine and The Fashion Year book, and did some research for films. But it was very difficult in 1983 to make an income from writing, and by then I had got the urge to design and make clothes again.

When, In 1985, Tim and I decided to revive Skin Two as a clubbing brand, we set out to offer a more contemporary approach for a new audience.  We played contemporary music, providing more of a nightclub environment. Fetishistas publisher Tony Mitchell (whom I’d met while he was still working on Sounds, and who’d become a personal friend) was asked to provide us with up-and-coming bands who would perform a short set for us. People either loved or hated this slot but it made those nights unique.

Alongside the club hosting I started to supply lots of boutiques worldwide, ending up with about 40 on my books. I would occasionally visit some of them with stock or to show them new styles. These were pre-Brexit days when one could export goods easily [to Europe, anyway] without the current nightmare exporting has become. One of those outlets was a new shop in Ghent, Belgium, opened by Patrick Degryse called “ G-Spot”, that sold mainly EctoMorph. It caused rather a stir in the reserved streets of Ghent and provided a rival shop to Boutique Minuit in Brussels, which I also supplied.

I met so many fetish enthusiasts who either already had sex shops or had recently opened a new shop carrying what became the British Invasion by designer-led latex.To make a collection more interesting in the early days, I decided to combine latex with lace and mesh to appear more like street wear and thereby sell to the fashion-led.

This offended the purists among the fetish community who didn’t like this ‘tainting’ of latex with other fabrics. One collection of PU separates, shorts, dresses and jackets had very long braid fringing that was featured in Elle Magazine.

Lad’s mags changed men’s take on fashion
Many magazines styled latex as part of their fashion features. The landscape for men changed with the launch of style magazines directed at them. It had started in 1985 with For Him, later rebranded as FHM in 1992. The first three copies were just distributed free in menswear shops so male customers would not have to admit to being interested in fashion. FHM’s new business model was designed to sell luxury products through top-end adverts to men who wanted to dress well but not in fashion: a new narrative for a new audience.

Loaded changed things again in 1994, becoming the first lads’ mag. Features on celebrities were accompanied by men behaving badly in quality packaging. Scantily-clad women on their covers became the norm.
As well as being promotional vehicles for us as designers, these magazines changed men’s perception of fashionable clothing.

I originally found it difficult to sell to men. Anything that I designed would be dismissed as looking ‘too gay.’… They were happy to buy latex for their girlfriends or wives but it took a lot of persuasion to educate their tastes when purchasing for themselves.

The colour palette we originally had available, mainly primaries, was limited by UK latex manufacturer Four D Rubber produced, which had a monopoly on the supply of latex sheeting for clothing . That all changed when Simon Rose at Libidex and his co-director Nigel Walker set up Radical Rubber in 2007 to manufacture latex sheeting in Malaysia. Radical not only offered a much bigger range of exciting colours — obliging the market leader 4D to follow suit — but was also happy to supply its products in smaller order quantities than 4D’s, which helped to support a lot of budding new latex designers.

More recently, In 2018, I started to experiment with quilting to see if it was possible to produce quilted latex garments. I was inspired by seeing the fashion collection of quilted, duvet-like coats and huge A-line dresses based on Renaissance themes produced by Pierpaolo for Moncler. (now Balenziaga’s creative director) The result was a collection of oversized, exaggerated-shaped quilted pieces, initially created in Bronze, Lime Green, Vibrant Pink and Vibrant Orange latex. Colours I normally never worked with.

I worked on the collection and images with photographer Aidan McCarthy, who had originally suggested incorporating the twin themes of exaggerated shapes and block colours that were concurrent in fashion. We used Blanket, a trans model, to promote the collection.

Catwalks in fetish clubs, initially in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and France, were another avenue I used to promote EctoMorph. In the UK, since its inception I have regularly participated in the annual Mach2 events, both to showcase and sell my designs to latex enthusiasts.

Mach2
Mach2 started as a spin-off in 1996 from International Mackintosh Society (IMS) whose events from 1986 had featured men in woollen suits watching fellow members (often their wives) parading down a catwalk wearing mackintoshes — nothing else being permitted.

Mach2 was eventually forced to modernise and embrace different gender persuasions, to the extent that in recent years, even crossdressing has been allowed! But the event’s organisers are still wary of offending their venue’s management, as they actively encourage the wearing of fetish all weekend — when some of the venue staff may be totally unfamiliar with the scene. Mach2 retains its pre-modern fetish traditions by holding a Saturday morning fashion show during their weekend extravaganza, using members as models, and by offering innocuous workshops like rope demonstrations or a maids’ tea party, a gala dinner and a traders’ market.

Gone are the days of reprimands such as that which I received from the Mach2 chairman when I sent my male helper as Eve down the runway wearing a newly designed maid’s outfit. Hard to imagine such prudish notions in any modern fetish club. But this was an evolution this annual event had to go through.

Mach2 is closer in character to some of the earlier European events like Switzerland’s Eccentric Fashion and Boutique Fancy in Basle, Kastley in Stuttgart or Dressing For Pleasure in New Jersey. They all adopted the sort of model that Mach2 continues with. I attended many of these events with my collections that then sold through their shops. These were typically run by slightly older enthusiasts who combined their personal obsessions — like model trains and steam railways in the case of Eccentric Fashion and IMS proprietor Jim Price — with fetish.
Eccentric’s Heinz and Marie Gerbig owned a complete miniature railway and would transport their kinkster guests on it around their hotel-based event in the picturesque Swiss mountains.

So many international events have since surpassed the concept behind the original fetish clubs.

Fetish Markets
Fetish markets aided this spread, starting to flourish in the mid-1990s .They became not only a great way for the expanding network of fetish companies to sell directly to the public, but also a place where people could meet, exchange information, wear fetish clothes and view new merchandise.

I have sold Ectomorph latex at many of these markets, especially London Alternative Market (LAM 2006 ), London Fetish Fair ( from1994), Boutique Bazaar (from 2014) . LAM has been pivotal in promotion and education of the BDSM scene through its monthly markets with their after parties and workshops.

The fashion scene is known for frenetic internal workings and external demands that force creativity, ultimately leading fashion to fragment into many different strands to meet consumer demands. Similarly, the ‘perv scene’ has experienced fragmentation into different markets catering for more specialised audiences.

While London Alternative Market primarily targets the BDSM scene, Le Boutique Bazaar (LBB), co-hosted by Torture Garden (TG), has more of a kink fashion customer base. This has continued with artisan designers , including EctoMorph, at the new east London kink fashion emporium Charmskool showroom which was opened this year by founder Alexandra Houston. Torture Garden events have broadened the palette of fetish by embracing a more expansive definition that includes other tactile fabrics. And for me, participating in LBB’s pop-up shopping events re-ignited my ability to engage with a younger fetish audience.

It was great to be back among the more confident attitudes exhibited by youth and the designers who cater for them. I love their exhibitionist displaying of their bodies, their wearing of underwear as outerwear and their bondage themed outfits that also feature feathers and transparent materials.

It reminds me of my original love of mixing fabrics with latex.
It seems a long way on from the days back in 2003 when I worked on supplying latex to Club Wicked, run by Brian and Caroline Sheridan, who had tested the boundaries of acceptability by opening a fetish swingers’ club in what had been Cynthia’s Restaurant on Tooley Street, under the arches of London Bridge.

The Sheridans were very ambitious in wanting to run the club with different themes nightly as well as having a Sunday fetish market. But the couple’s outspoken views and endeavours to obtain a sex establishment licence received sensationalised coverage in the Press that quickly came to the attention of the venue’s august neighbour, Southwark Cathedral. And as a consequence, Wicked was forced to close.

A more difficult climate for kink culture
The landscape for fetish in my experience has changed over the last 40 years. Since Covid the network of kink shops and kink clubs has contracted. At the same time, the prolific use of kink on the internet (which has substantially replaced print magazines) is experiencing the effects of censorship or complete closure. Latex Models, for example have found their social media platforms on Facebook or Instagram just get taken down when content is inexplicably interpreted as offensive or said to be breaking the platforms’ rules.

A backlash against kink is definitely occurring which is also seen in a reduction of the remaining venues willing to accommodate fetish related events for fear of breaking licensing laws . Meanwhile, venues in cities like London are being redeveloped mainly as blocks of flats, which are much more profitable for landlords. All in all, a more difficult climate currently exists for fetish culture.

It is hard to imagine how ubiquitous fetish shops were on high streets in the late 20th Century, given that their number has shrunk to just a handful now. I could not conceive today of selling latex to a big US department store chain like Nordstrom as I did in 1988, or seeing EctoMorph on the cover of Womens Wear Daily in a promotion for the latex collection Nordstrom bought from me. Yet a number of latex labels — pioneered by Atsuko Kudo and Venus Prototype and now also including brands such as Dead Lotus Couture and Poster Girl in the UK, Vex in the USA and Avellano in Paris — sell to the celebrity market. This helps to promote the acceptability of kink, which is ironic as the reason they choose to wear latex is mostly for its shock value. Many of these celebrities are not conventional fashion model size and have, along with a less critical fashion industry, helped to promote other body shapes.

Through EctoMorph I have always sold to people with different body types and a lot of cross dressers demonstrating that tight clothing is not only for the stick thin. Our tag line on Instagram is “ageless latex design”. Inclusivity in general has always been important on the fetish/BDM scene, which has long regarded gender stereotypes as irrelevant and LGBTQ rights as a guiding principle.

From its origins as a Soho club in 1983, Skin Two prided itself on creating a culture with its events that was anti-ageist, and that attracted a clientèle from 18 to 80. This is now the norm in most fetish events.

The Late Leigh Bowery: transgressive star
A guest at the first annual Skin Two Rubber Ball in 1992 (the first really large-scale Skin Two party, which attracted several thousand people to Hammersmith Palais on a Monday night!) was the late, great Leigh Bowery, who assimilated fetish themes which he interpreted in his own idiosyncratic way. His ‘gimp mask’ hoods that were usually made from the same (often sequinned) fabric as the rest of his costume, and his collaborations with the legendary Mr Pearl on making corsets were a unique take on fetish that he made his own.

Leigh lived the personality that he became 24/7, and was hugely influential in making an eccentric iconic personality into one that was so visible and known. His appearance as a sculpture in the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, just being himself in his spectacular outfits, made that being into a spectacle.

He did however trigger the demise of the second Skin Two night Tim and I were organising , which was set to take place at Peter Stringfellow’s Hippodrome venue during a planned Sex Week, as a one off in (1987 ).

The Sex Week’s first night was gay night, at which Leigh decided to perform an enema show on stage. The Metropolitan Police, who were determined to clean up Soho and were monitoring the event, pressurised Stringfellow to cancel the rest of the programme. And as a consequence, Skin Two had its Tuesday night extravaganza dropped.

Leigh’s transgressive personalities paved the way for people like Grayson Perry who, despite being an excellent potter, may not have won the Turner Prize as Claire, ‘the ugliest glamour girl in town” without the inroads that Bowery made. I sold a latex outfit to Grayson in his early days. He displayed a photograph of himself as Claire wearing it at a talk he gave that I attended in Victoria Miro, his Islington gallery. Both men were contestants in Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World in 1986. This event had provided a platform for transvestism and sadomasochism, both activities that were considered controversial at the time.

Bowery also collaborated with Michael Clarke and David Holah of Bodymap to design bum-exposing creations that clearly referenced spanking skirts and chaps. It became a two-way process with overlapping influences.

Shops fade away; online saves the day
By this time, fashion was no longer working along top-down filtering lines. Rather, influences were a collage drawn from the social mix of subcultures and fashion history.

Just as the fetish shops that mushroomed globally in the 1980s and 1990s were curbed by prejudice and escalating property values that saw them replaced by high street chains, the hierarchy of fashion has collapsed. With branded companies’ collections becoming available in outlet stores, secondhand shops and sales, creating an ‘altered high street’ phenomenon.

The internet saved companies like my own EctoMorph, which moved from a largely wholesale-based business to exclusively retail through to its online shop. A direct relationship with customers has steered the company into its current format.

Over the years EctoMorph’s collections were regularly added-to, styles morphed and fashion trends incorporated. The use of laser-cut latex for decorative trims was another departure that I took to make latex look more stylish, and I was one of the first to use the process. Other companies have gone on to take this to new levels — a notable example of a new technology enabling a more sophisticated product to be fabricated.

My new collection called Back to Black, inspired by Amy Winehouse, is a return to Ectomorph’s original model. Quintessential qualities of studding, tailored shapes and volumes have been included in the new designs, while styles have been updated and fashioned to reflect current trends – including cropped bikers, tight silhouettes and draping.

Having progressed through countless colours, there seems to be an appetite again for a more monochrome look —It feels new again and is reflective perhaps of the uncertain times in which we live in. And I still live in North London!