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November 2006: PAUL SMITH’S DEVIANT’S DIARY - Skint Wo - The tale of a penniless Chinaman.
Having reported on the excellent Skin Two Expo last year, I was invited back this October to experience the full range of fetish events held over 'The Skin Two Rubber Ball Weekend'. Running from Thursday the 5th of October to early morning on Monday the 9th, they offer the most concentrated hours of hedonistic pleasure on any fetish-fashion fan's calendar.
Due to prior commitments I missed the 'unusual cabaret' of The Flash Monkey, taking place at Café De Paris on Thursday, 'til late. I hear it was good though, with a burlesque bazaar of exotic live music, circus and fairground acts, DJs and performers entertaining a glamorous, diverse crowd. This from the blurb on the professional fold-out Rubber Ball Weekend guide I was given; as I say, I didn't get there myself.
Instead, my busy visit to London started at the Skin Two Cocktail Party, held at Rush in the heart of Soho on Friday night under a fittingly full moon. Dress was formal/cocktail or fetish, which was a little alarming for me as my idea of formal is wearing a shirt with hardly any visible stains and ensuring my fly is done up. As for fetish, while I admire a lady in a tight corset or tiny latex dress (she's asked me to stop) I'm not personally built to look great in rubber. Except, perhaps, while scuba diving, and even then only from an angle where I don't look like a bull seal. So I went with the shirt and tie option, and ended up feeling rather under-dressed compared to the preening beauties that were Ritzy Crackers and Miss Vanilla Lush. Nice lads. They made good use of the bar's many mirrors, and I admired how they -and others- managed the stairs in what were potentially killer heels. It all got a bit 'Stars in their Eyes' when a Plain Jane from accounts vanished from sight for a moment, only to reappear as Mistress Flame Payne. Just without the dry ice. The place had filled up by 9pm and I chatted and snapped to a soundtrack of The Propeller Heads and marching bands via The Big Bopper and Johnny Cash. Looking back though my 600-odd photos, a standout visitor was The Baron Von Rukavina who'd spent over £900 on an Eaton schoolboy's uniform from House of Harlot for the event, and a further £400 on an authentic top hat and cane. Outstanding effort sir! I also met Nova, who's done bondage web-casts with Chanta Rose, who arrived with David and Jenis who I'd met a few months earlier at the London Alternative Market. So many familiar faces and rubber-clad bottoms suddenly! I think it's fair to say the fetish scene is quite incestuous. But only as a role-play I hope.
As I'd not been able to ingratiate my way into The Torture Garden 'Rubber Ball Weekend Special' club night at the Renaissance Rooms, it was an earlier night for me than it was for many party animals, who could dance and spank there 'til 6am. Instead I called it a day at midnight, three hours before the Cocktail Party's nightclub/bar venue closed down. I hear Pete who won Big Brother 7 a few months ago was at TG. I hear it - I just don't care about it.
'The World's Biggest Fetish Fair', stated my £10 ticket for the Skin Two Expo, and with over 120 international retailers selling clothes, footwear, accessories, jewellery, equipment, furniture, clubbing experiences, holidays, art and photographic services, books, ornaments and more, it's not hard to believe. Saturday's Expo began at a sensible 1pm at the same venue as last year's: Hall 1 of The Barbican Exhibition Centre, on Golden Lane.
Taking a quick tour, I saw Ulorin Vex who posed for me last year looking delightful on a stand selling funky leather masks, before she was eaten by a £900 inflatable rubber Venus Fly Trap from Fetish Universe (these things will happen) and met Tamsin Howells on the Sugar Sugar stand, where she was selling interesting encapsulated jewellery alongside fancy bloomers. Some backless, the brazen hussies!
Upstairs, past flogging and rope bondage demos, Little Miss Chaos (designer/model), Kakja (model/performer) and Ruby Rouge (sexy/sweet) were taking a break from selling chocolate truffles when I met them in the bar area. This was before I was strangely drawn to Nikla Black and Rubber Star from Italy, who'd be performing an act called Viva Maria that night at the ball. I couldn't wait.
The Spanner Trust told me about a marked upturn in police investigations into the BDSM scene, with reports of one per week reaching them. Clearly a worry for anyone who likes sex to sting rather than tingle. The umbrella organisation 'Backlash' was also at the show, giving advice on what to do if a real policeman presents himself, rather than one of the many fakes I saw over the weekend.
One of the lower-key stands at the Expo was The Rally Shack, who specialise in 'playfully gothic' t-shirts. Errol (a nickname he's never liked, but it's stuck now) showed me 'Do my boobs look big in this' girl-vests and 'Come on them if you think you're hard enuff' T's, as well as handmade jewellery which has 'week day' appeal as well as being suitable for more punishing weekend wear.
The Skin Two Ball is perhaps the flagship event of the weekend, drawing several thousand attendees from around the world to its multi-roomed home below London Bridge station at SeOne on Weston Street. Kicking off at 10pm -giving last-gasp Expo visitors just an hour to slip into something less comfortable- it runs for eight adrenaline (and Pernod and Black) fuelled hours. The theme was Stage and Screen, so I was on the hunt for looks I remembered. I spotted an 'Erotica video' Madonna, several Matrix Neos, a lady called Olivia of Noritex in a J-Lo-esque design from The Cell she'd made, and four female pirates. However, it was Orchid as Liz Taylor's Cleopatra (damn fine asp!) and RR as Yul Brynner's Rameses from The Ten Commandments who impressed me the most. Having spent £800 on the Breathless and Inner Sanctum-made outfits, and well over a grand on the weekend as a whole, it's only fair. I don't know who got the prize for the best-dressed partygoer, or even what the prize was, but I can see them making any shortlist. I also admired Dante Posh's classic Star Trek latex mini-dress, although she seemed almost too well informed about Uhura's uniform. Could such a beautiful woman be a closet geek? I don't know, but she did ask me to polish her buttocks so she's a star as far as I'm concerned. Keeping with a sci-fi theme, the Star Wars 'Knights of the Old Republic' show was very well done. I need to know where I can get one of those lightsabers!
I'd also endeavoured to blend into the scene with a natty hat from my local army surplus store and a military jacket from eBay, which I'd jazzed up with some Vietnamese medals I found at a flea market while shopping for fleas. I looked like the paramilitary wing of South West Trains though, so decided against spending the whole evening introducing myself as El Presidenté and affecting a vaguely foreign accent. This would've been preferable to the other nickname I'd concocted for myself. With so many 'Master this' and 'Master that's around, I'd settled on my own Dominant name: Master Chef. These little things entertain me.
I took a special interest in some of the more unexpected outfits, as their wearers had clearly gone to a lot of trouble and/or expense to stand out from an already outstanding crowd. There was a Queen Elizabeth 1st and the Baron I'd met at the Cocktail Party was back, dressed in an authentic linen Great White Hunter outfit. Beautiful designer of beautiful sex toys, Shiri Zinn, accompanied him in a literal cat suit. Complete with tail. I know she reads the mag so hi Shiri, and "Gurr!" Someone with two points of interest walked past us, distracting me. They (I think it was a he, but it sometimes pays to hedge your bets) were wearing a pair of pink Cone vibrators on their chest. It actually looked pretty good! One important lesson I learned is trannies are impervious to pain - man, they know how to party! Seven feet tall and eight hours in nine inch heels is making me think 'ouch', which is something it has in common with the dungeon room where things got a bit floggy, fisty and squirty. I was going to say that's not something you see everyday, but given the readership of ETO, perhaps I won't. As you might.
Since I'd been honoured with one of only a few camera passes to be issued, I felt duty-bound to chat to the fetishistas and take some illustrative photos. Generally a camera or camera phone being used is enough to get you shown the door -more specifically, the outside of it- so I was sure to keep my pass in sight at all times. Even so I was still challenged a couple of times, which I think is great as it shows security are actually doing what they're paid to do and not just looking at boobs. My xD card almost went into meltdown when Rubberdoll took to the stage in one of many great shows I caught. She/they did a Nun and Schoolgirl act called Nunspliotation that left me mentally scared in a way I'll treasure forever. Keeping with the religious theme, I knew I'd seen everything when I met a fetish Jesus at the bar.
Outside, during a much needed breather, I spoke to a nice couple in police uniform who'd won a pair of the £32 (£38 on the door) each tickets for the ball in a 'Handjobs Media' bag given away at the London Fetish Fair. Shortly afterwards I bumped into an ex(lite) which is always a little odd but then I was given an ice cream by a nice lady, and was delighted to rediscover a girl in a backless dress I'd been looking for all night. I needed to get a photo of the most perfect bottom in the world, you see. The night ended at 6am, the Tube started at 7.30 and I was back at my hotel a bit after eight, feeling like I'd enjoyed myself, and been vigorously enjoyed too.
Sunday's Expo was a little blearier than Saturday's, but I still felt sharp enough to chat to some stallholders about their goods. There were familiar faces on the Herta Gummi stand, where I saw £49.99 cones and some cunning inflatable toys. The problem with your average pump-up dildo is if it's small enough to fit anywhere, it's too floppy to be eased into place, and if it's pumped up to be hard, it's too fat to go anywhere. Herta Gummi get around this age-old problem with inflatables featuring a semi-stiff inner core. Technology is a wonderful thing. UV-fluorescing accessories by Argentinean Eva Reiser of Silicon Creations were eye-catching, and I recognised a sort of flaming corset design from the night before. Another stand you couldn't ignore was Pretty Pervy, who make unique outfits, such as an inflatable lamb suit, killer whales, Martians and strange alien bugs. Perhaps my favourite was a giant-bottomed, red and white creation called Toxic Toadstool, which I was pleasantly surprised to discover was being worn by my arse-polishing mate Dante. Hilary of Pretty Pervy, alongside Robert, had created a range of weird and wonderful… clothing isn't the right word, and costume seems to be lacking something too. Couture sounds right.
The two Andys of Electrastim(.com) were joined by a doe-eyed Hollie in police uniform on their stand, which featured some stunning (if set to stun) new insertable electric items. Talking to stand holders, it was clear that the fetish market hadn't escaped the downturn that has affected the wider industry over the last year. That said, I never saw Electrastim's stand empty, and they had a better day on the quieter Sunday, so any issue wasn't due to a lack of visitor numbers. After the event I spoke to the Expo's co-organiser (along with his wife Cathy) Paul Norris and he confirmed my estimate of about 4000 unique (some of them very much so) visitors over the two days, and assured me that the Sunday show always drew about the same number of shoppers. It was just the regular upturn in Saturday attendees that made the Sunday look quieter. He also reminded me I'd seen far fewer US visitors and exhibitors than last year thanks to a fierce exchange rate, and told me that of the 120ish stands, 35 were newbies to the show. Naught Nails manicurists were one of them and they'd made a great impression, preparing many a blood-red claw for Saturday night's Ball. They also give a stand or two away free every year to encourage exhibitors who wouldn't otherwise be able to display their wares; this year it was to Art by Victoria.
Tragedy had struck Vienna-based HW Design and Fetish Live, whose stand stock had been misdirected to Coventry. The depot wasn't open at weekends, so basically they had a couple of rubber hoods to sell, and an empty rail to glower at. Despite what must have been a dreadful situation, the owner still managed to joke with me that what little product they had brought in their luggage had, at least, gone well. "We've sold out!", he laughed, but I could see the pain in his eyes.
Fairy Goth Mother were also less than happy, thanks to cheap knockoffs of their gorgeous corset designs turning up within weeks of being unveiled, but they're fighting back against far-eastern copycats by recently opening a new 2000squ.ft. showroom and workshop in Spitalfields to compliment their smaller shop in Camden. And if that doesn't work, there's talk of upping the ante with hand-stitched beading that's far harder to make a reproduction of cheaply. I'm sure some sweatshop owner will regard that as playing dirty, but you can't please everyone.
In contrast, Zena and Leigh of Mighty Aphrodite, who do 'boudoir photography', were very happy, as they'd covered the cost of their stand within two hours of the first day and doubled last year's performance. They were still taking bookings on Sunday evening for consolations and photo sessions. Their big new things are beautiful metal-bound art books for customer's portfolios. They're a £170 hike up from MA's usual £480/20 image album deal, but they exude quality and have room for up to 40 shots over 30 glossy art-board pages; very reminiscent of Madonna's Sex Book from the early 90's, so that's all good. On their stand I also met all 32B-24-36 and 5' 5" of SammieB (sammieglamour.co.uk), who's modelled for them. Later Leigh and Zena had ploughed half of the profit from bookings taken at the show into one of Stig Art's amazing spider-web steel chairs. Still, such a striking architectural piece is an investment for a studio so I'm sure they've speculated to accumulate.
Peter Felix Kurtz and an unnamed fellow ETO fan seemed please to see me and I enjoyed looking through the portfolio of photos on the stand they shared with Breathless, who make some deeply alluring outfits for boys and girls. Robin Archer, MD of House of Harlot talked me through their range, from a £30ish latex thong to a £8500 multi-layered female Darth Vaderesque suit he'd made for a client. He currently supplies half a dozen shops in the UK, and wholesalers around the world. His focus remains his Holloway Road shop and web site though, as well as one-off commissions. Latex wedding dresses sound popular, and don't appear to be any more expensive than their more traditional silk equivalents.
Jason of Vibrafun, a show regular, gave me crisps and appeared to be having an ok Sunday as he vibrated unsuspecting members of the public as they passed his stand and the E-Stim Systems lady and gents were being kept busy too. Perhaps because they faced 'Strapon Jane' and her stand, which seemed to always draw a good crowd.
At the end of a busy weekend, it was back on with my outfit and across town to Abacus, close to the Bank of England, for the UK fetish club collective event called, fittingly, The Finale. Isis, Club R.U.B., Torture Garden, Club Severine, Love Trix, Subversion, Sweet Torments and Smack! had come together to put their name to the last party of a weekend of excess and debauchery, complete with DJs and a 'full play' area. However, it was still a Skin Two-run event and seemed to be going smoothly as I chatted to the stage manager who helped ensure that it did. She explained how the change of venues from the Hammersmith Palace (lots of changing areas and back-stage room) to SeOne (more traditional club) for the Ball had meant a change of approach. Past fashion shows relied on space for performers that the new venue just doesn't have, so they'd been phased out. Some people seemed to miss them, but I can't say I noticed anything lacking, at any of the events.
If there were any downsides to the night, it'd have to including one frankly creepy little fellow I saw, who may not have represented an 'undesirable element', but to my mind he did represent a 'differently desirable' element. If he had been a foot taller he'd have been sinister. Another quirk I picked up on is the lack of working pockets on many a fetish outfit. For some the solution is a bumbag, which I think spoils the lines of a carefully tailored latex suit. But this is nit picking really. The crowd were generally elegant, beautifully dressed and clearly out for a good time. One visitor who I'd seen at every event was Juan from Madrid who'd made a special journey to the UK for the weekend. He summed it up beautifully, "It iz beyond the imagination! Brilliant!" Speaking to him, and a charming German lady who works for Marquis, it seems there's nothing similar to the UK scene elsewhere in Europe and I think that's something those who run the many and varied events of the Skin Two Rubber Ball weekend can be very proud of.
When a media feeding frenzy developed around a public spanking scene with optional fingering, I knew it was time to leave. So I contributed to the scrum for another 20 minutes before I dragged myself away. On the long train ride home I had time to reflect on the weekend, what I'd seen and done, and how I felt about my 'Skin Two Experience'. I think, on balance, and to use the language of passion, I'd had a fucking good time. Thanks to Hannah and Cathy for my pass and to the many shoppers, browsers, exhibitors and partygoers who'd helped make it a weekend to savour.
Don't read it, download it! : Click here to see many more shots from my Skin Two Rubber Ball Weekend adventure!