The Evolution of the Leather-Clad Dominatrix

Valerie Leon in the Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

The Evolution of the Leather-Clad Dominatrix

Leather – it’s a unique material, made from an actual skin it offers protection from both the elements and injury; lasting years, it moulds itself to your shape and actually looks better with age…. but how did the modern image of the dominatrix become so firmly associated with leather?

There’s Something About Leather
The utilising of dried animal hides for clothing has been around since the Stone Age but we don’t need to go that far back – the lineage we’re looking at starts a little after WW2,  with the now iconic fashion item the leather jacket.  For both world wars air force pilots wore leather flying outfits for extra protection, often lined with sheepskin to add warmth to combat the extreme cold of the cockpits at altitude.  However, it was the American aviator leather bomber jackets from WW2 that with a little help from Hollywood became the post-war must-have male fashion item.  Leather was now cool.

Leather Bikers
It was also around this time during the ’30s & ’40s that motorcycling made a huge cultural shift, no longer the expensive hobby of tweed wearing toffs, mass production made bikes cheaper and they got faster. The need for protective clothing grew and many bikers turned to the black leather jacket.  In the USA bikers formed clubs made up of those who wanted to challenge the authorities as rebels and social outlaws.  It grew into a subculture pitted against everything straight-laced, commercialised America stood for. Leather was now firmly associated with counter-culture.

In the original American outlaw biker film – The Wild One (1953)
Marlon Brando’s character is asked,
“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”,
he answers, “Whaddaya got?”

Leather = Sexy
The prevalence of leather due to the war and bikers alongside its glamorization by Hollywood seems to have brought the possibilities of this special material to the masses and for some its transformative, erotic and fetishistic possibilities.  By the ’40s & ’50s a small number of illegal mail-order ‘art’ photographs – the porn of the day – were being produced in the states. Notably, Charles Guyette 1902-1976 who in 1935 went to prison for sending lewd material in the post, becoming the first martyr in fetish history.

The majority of the earliest material was photos of women in corsets, heels, stockings & suspenders influenced by American burlesque outfits, striptease shows were flourishing at this time; but some of the photos were pure fetish with leather body suits, thigh-high lace-up boots and leather opera gloves.  Plus some light bondage and spanking.  These would hugely influence the next generation – our fetish founding fathers: Irving Klaw, John Willie & Eric Stanton.  Leather was now sexy.
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Leather Daddies
Returning to our epoch-making jacket, the biker look was then taken up by another repressed underground group the gay Leather Daddy scene.  It grew up in large cities in the late ’50s – adding cowboy chaps, cop boots and body harnesses, epitomised in the work of Tom of Finland‘s muscle men – attracted to it as an expression of ultra masculinity to combat the mainstream notion that gay men were effeminate.  Leather was fierce and powerful.

In Birmingham, England another subculture was about to get a major make-over, the Heavy Metal music scene in its early years had groups wearing hippyish outfits.  But in 1978, Rob Halford of  Judas Priest strutted out on stage in what could only be described as the full ‘leather daddy look’  leather trousers, jacket, peaked leather cap, studded gauntlets and a whip!  There was some influence from the punk rock scene but Rob Halford was secretly gay, he didn’t come out until 1998.  Thus undoubtedly it was gay fetish leatherwear that went on to be worn by the disenchanted metalhead youths of America & the west – perhaps we just won’t tell them 😉   Leather made you part of a select group.

The world’s first Fetish Venn Diagram

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The Burgeoning ’80s Fetish Scene
So a combination of the full body covering of leather bikers; the figure-hugging fetishistic and sexual nature of the ’50s fetish images; the body harness and ‘open access’ garments of the leather daddy scene; the spiky studs of the metalheads; and a new addition… which would become leather’s bigest rival – rubber! – all fused together and gave birth to the burgeoning ’80s Fetish Scene.

The Leather-Clad Dominatrix

Leather lover Mistress Sidonia

So what is it about leather that makes is so perfect for the female domme – yes there are fetishists who worship it but it’s more than that, we wear if for the power it imbues.  When you pull on that black leather you’re embodying all that history, body armour with a statement – cool, sexy, fierce, powerful, trouble, anti-authority and outside of society… as my good friend Meisterine JzarA used to say, “the superior material.”

I’ve generalized in this article, of course many of these subcultures or activities had been happening underground for years. I’m focusing on when these groups became more formally defined and known to the mainstream.  And the ‘schoolish’ diagrams were intended to be tongue in cheek 🙂