Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Fetishwear: A Kinky History

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

What is the origin of the word fetish? How did the war play a part in shaping fetishwear? And what are some of the styles that are most enjoyed?Kink and fetish scenes have been a part of society for years, and the clothing that participants wear is often very specific, and a key part of what makes them, well, effective. It’s a fascinating history, and to explain it to us is Frenchy Lunning, author of Fetish Style. Kate also speaks to professional dominatrix Mistress Jean Bardot.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. My lovely betwixters, it's me, E.K. Lister. I am here, once more, with you, to protect you from what is coming your way on this podcast. This is the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast book by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way,

covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And for the adults in the room, while I've got you here, If you wouldn't mind just taking a couple of seconds out of your terribly busy day to subscribe to this podcast, wherever you happen to be listening to it, that really, really would help us out an awful lot. Right, on with the show. Welcome, betwixters. You may be wondering why the lights are low. You may be wondering what that throne in the corner is all about. No, no, we haven't broken into Buckingham Palace. Not yet, anyway. We are in the dungeon of a dominator.

and there are far more important things happening here. And a crucial part of what goes on here is, of course, the outfits. From lethal heels to latex zipped up tight, the clothing is as much about BDSM and power as the whips or a St. George's Cross. And if you don't know what that one is, don't be looking at up and blaming me. The outfits are fantastic, but it's not exactly something that you'd kick back and wear in front of the telly. I mean, I say that, but I think that that's exactly. the point, right? It's theatre, it's performance. This all comes together to create a mood, a vibe.

But what are the origins of these outfits? How are they used? Why are they used? What do they mean to the people who wear them? We'll stick around and we are going to find out. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary.

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. Kink and fetish scenes have been part of our society for many a year, and the clothing that the kinksters wear is often very specific and very important to the scenes that they are creating.

It is a fascinating history and here to explain us is French Lunning, author of Fetish Style. Later on in the episode, I'll be having a conversation with the one and only mistress Jean Bardo, a professional dominatrix. So you walk in my dungeon and it is a corridor where there's a coat closet. You go through blue velvet curtains and my dungeon colors on their first floor are purples and blues. and I have a full suite of fetters gear from the UK where your first thing you'll see is a six-foot leather padded wheel where there's tie points on it and I can tie someone to it and spin them around.

To the right of that, I have my collection of rubber gas masks, military gas masks, vintage gas masks. They're all lit from behind so they kind of glow from the wall. Prepare yourself for some fantastic fashions betwixters. But first, what is the origin of the word fetish? How did the war play a part in shaping fetish wear? And what are some of the styles that have endured the longest? Whips at the ready betwixters, let's do this. Hello and welcome to betwixtor sheets. It's only French-Lunning. How are you doing? I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.

I'm thrilled that you are here as the author of Fetish Style. I've got so many questions I want to ask you, but I'll start with the basic page one. Do you remember the moment where you thought, I need to write a book about this? This needs a book. I need to research this topic. Well, it's interesting because I was at a point in my career, because I'm a teacher. I'm a professor of art history, design history, cultural studies, that kind of stuff. And, you know, it was book time.

I had written all these papers. I have all of these things. I have, you know, I've done little chapters and books and whatnot. It's time for a book, right? And as it turned out, one of the people from the University of Minnesota where I was getting my PhD, or I got my PhD, contacted me and said, you know, we're doing a book series with Berg publishers in Britain. And we are doing a series on subcultural fashions. We couldn't think of anybody who would do fetish except you. And I was like, oh, really? Because I know nothing about it, you know. I know the dominatrix with the underwear, 19th century underwear, but that's about what I knew. And they're like, yeah, but you'll do it, you know. And I'm like, well, okay, fine. I have to do a book now. So that'll be good, right?

It has nothing to do with my topic or anything, but not really. I mean, I'm a fashion girl, right? I've always loved fashion. But so I took it on. And as I was sort of fiddling around doing research, one of my colleagues at Minneapolis College of Art and Design where I teach, said, hey, by the way, do you know that Jean, your ex-student, is now a major and well-known internationally dominatrix? I'm like, what?

Well, that's handy. Look at that. And that's how this all got put together. Otherwise, I don't know if I could have written it because it's a very close society. For good reason, I think, like the Kink community, BDSM community are quite resistant to anyone wanting to report on them because it's often done badly. And then so once you've got, I don't want to say you're in, that doesn't sound quite right. But that doesn't automatically mean, though, that people are going to talk to you,

that they're going to welcome you. I mean, that only really gets you in the door. So how did you as somebody who, you've just said there, that this wasn't completely your wheelhouse, that you must have had to learn damn quick French. Well, I learned from Gene. I found out where she performed. And in those days, she performed at a club in downtown, kind of skeezy part of Minneapolis. And not anymore. It's very fashionable, of course, now, but back then. And at midnight at this club, which was basically a kind of punk club, you went up this staircase to this upper level. And there was Gene performing with the community. And so I walked in thinking myself, very cool. I'm dressed all in black. I've got over the knee leather boots. I thought I was going to be really cool. I walk in and look around and go, oh my God. No, I am not in Minneapolis anymore, right? And Jean, who's at the front. Now, this is February or so, and she's got this

pale blue velvet corset on with fur, white fur at the top, and a little tiny apron over her. She has this gorgeous, long model body, right? But as she turns around, it goes up into a V, and you can see her bare ass. Right. So, and it's lined with, you know, white fur. And she screams from the stage to the back, the door where I've just walked into this going, oh, shit. And she goes, French!

And so everybody turns around and looks at me. And she said, Frenchie's writing a book, and I hope you all help her do this, right? And this is a room full of kink. And they all did. They all opened up like flowers because she has such a positive attitude about kink and about sexuality and about all kinds of things that it just opened up like a flower to me. And she got me in touch with torture garden with a lot of places in Europe and stuff. I had an open door. She was my conduit.

And you'll hopefully meet her at some point because she's just so magnanimous and so warm. She's known as the laughing dominatrix because she has a great sense of humor and she's just warm, you know, whereas a lot of these people mean fetish is trauma. And for her to incorporate that warmth into the performance of the fetish performance is to be welcomed into your own trauma with support, you know, is let. That's what I saw. You must have seen a lot. I saw a lot. I was invited to this. The dungeon parties.

You just stood at the back, taking notes. Yes. I was. But after a while, your jaws dropped and you're like, you're so taken in by what you're seeing. Yeah. And you feel so, I felt so privileged to be allowed because they allowed me to see too. You know, I was allowed in where I don't think many people have been able to go. And I saw this happen, right?

I saw it a million times in different ways and how she brought people into the. themselves, right? And performed for them that thing that they desire but cannot really experience, right? It's because it's based on some kind of origin story that was so amazing. Something, right? Oh, yeah. Virtually all of the respondents told me that it starts with an origin story, how that desire became manifest in their psyche and in their sexual being, in their erot. their personal rhodicism, such that it was so intense that that's what they look for now, right? That's what they desire and it's only through kink that they can even bring it back in, right? Fascinating.

It's so strange. I've heard so many people say that. And I guess even like if you turn that lens back on yourself, you can pinpoint stuff in your past, but somehow like your very young brain, it encountered something, but it didn't respond in the way it was supposed to. And now it's a thing. And now it's a thing. Now it's a thing and you can't predict what it's going to be. There's no logical reason why it's this thing.

We're all just walking around and just boom, it could happen. And then that's you. Yes. And so many respondents actually, I went on a website that existed at the time that were spouses of people who were kinks, right, who had kink. And how they lived in their marriage with these things. And so I had a long conversation with one guy who told me that, you know, this was so intense for him.

and he was a small infant. He was like a toddler when this happened, that he could never, never orgasm without this thing. And you know that it was something that deeply depressed him, that he had lost girlfriends and, you know, of potential wives and stuff because he couldn't do this without this one thing. And I would describe it to you,

but I would out him in a way, I think, that I don't want to do. But it was something he saw at the beach. And that was so intense that even as an infant, he had an orgasm, right? And it was so strong in a memory, in experience for a toddler, that it went with him all his life. And this can happen, right? Well, it can. You just made me think of Havlock Ellis, the famous 19th century sexologist who wrote famously cataloguing human sexuality. But he was a virgin for most of his life and couldn't get an erection until he saw a woman urinating and he realized that that was his thing.

and then he was off. Yep. And that's kind of the same thing, and he couldn't do it without it. It's totally the same thing. That's exactly the same thing. He was a king. I know that the men that I'm attracted to were because of I saw Leonard Bernstein on TV conducting and his passion and his long hair and his face and stuff, and that did it.

That was it. That was it. You know, you look for that kind of person, right? It marked me, right, in a sense, you know, forever. I was so drawn to his passion. and the music and his drama. He was such a drama queen, right? And I didn't realize that at the time, right?

But, you know, he knew what he was selling in a sense, right? Was this passion and music. And he was not only making it with the orchestra, he was making it with the audience, right? By performing this way, right? And that's really what fetish performance is. It's like bringing that character or that situation into what Freud called the I know it's not real, nevertheless, there it is, right? I can believe in, I can enter this, knowing that it's not totally real.

Nevertheless, I can still get something from it, right? Laura Mulvey talks about it a lot in her essay on fetishism. It's just something that works, and that's how the kink works, right? It brings you close to what you desire so much so that you can enter it in performance. And that's what Jean does in these performative things that she would do every Saturday night. She would, we had two people who like to be walked on with high heels by women, two men. We had like very many sort of things and these things would happen, right? And she would just say, does anybody have anything they want to do?

And they would come up and talk to her for a minute in private and then they would do it, right? And that's all it took. There was nothing very flash about it, right? The fashion part comes in because you've got John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, who I think are deep kinkers, and they brought it into their fashion. And that's how it ends up, you know. Well, it started, you know, in the late 19th century with fashion, right, of coming into play, you know, the different couture houses, the whole notion of couture,

bringing these dream women into the parlance of, you know, who you can be through drawings and photography, which was, you know, key. It's also where pornography comes in, right? right at this time, right? Pornographic things that are so hilarious if you saw them. I don't know how they turned to anybody on. They're so hilarious. I love looking at it.

There's a real sense that they're trying to work out what looks sexy and they haven't quite cracked it yet. My favorite is this girl with a hoop skirt and all she's doing is she has this dead pen look on her face and she's holding up her skirt and she doesn't have any underpants on. And that's all you see is this blob of pubic hair and these kind of bad legs. And this is supposed to turn you on.

Right. And it's just like I laugh every time I see it. So that happens then, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, Galliano and Alexander McQueen were at their height, and they were doing these leather corsets with, you know, all kinds of stuff. And there were corset makers in the kink world doing these kind of things with like wings on the back of their corsets and stuff like this. There was a kind of convergence for a little bit of these two functions, except that they function very differently, right? Fashion as fetish is Gagliano. and McQueen. Fetish as fashion are torture garden and stuff where, you know, fashion is where people look at you at your appearance and you're dressing for that look, right? Whereas in fetish, you're dressing and your corset for this inner desires to have fullness, right?

So that's the difference between the two. Can I take you back earlier than the 90s? I'm trying to think of like, you said there that the early pornography stills, and pictures that you get, they're almost sweet and naive, some of them. You just can't quite go, okay, if that was your thing. But when did you see, when did you see, like, what we might think of as kink fashion or fashion wear starting to come into it? And like now, the idea of like a dominatrix is so stylized in our imagination.

We've gone like leather or PVC and boots, but like the early versions of this, was it there then as well? I think so. Well, I think that's where it starts because that underwear, and Gene and I talked at length. In fact, we sat in a bar one time, and I drew a picture of a naked woman, and she just went through and said all of the things that you can do to all the different parts of the body and fetish, right? And I think it probably was always there. I think, you know, even in, you know, the classic Roman and Greek and Roman times, they had fetishes. You can tell, right?

But there was no way of recording them. They aren't going to talk about them. It was just part of life, I think, back then. You know, the aristocracy was able to do this stuff. But I think what happens in the late 19th century is that there are ways to reproduce this because we had magazines. We had printing presses and we could like reproduce this stuff. We could make photographs and put them in little wooden things, which is what they had at street corners.

You could look inside and put a frank in and see a naked lady with her dress up, right? So the photographs that they were seeing of kink situations, and there's a whole bunch of them with like women laying around in their underwear, in their corsets and little garters and whatnot, with a guy, you know, with his pants down and, you know, having a great time and whatnot. And that's what a lot of them are. It's like men with like either one or two women or, you know, whatever. But they also have spanking images. He's being spanking.

And spanking texts. They were spanking. Crazy the Victorians. Yes, yes. And that's when, what's his name? Marquis de Satt, all of these guys are writing in around this time, right, about spankings and all this other stuff. And you see these photographs. And in the photographs are the women in these underwear things, right?

Or they're dressed as nuns or teachers or some kind of, you know, matriarchal power thing, right? And so that becomes like the settings and the wear of contemporary kink only be. because I think it got set up in that time frame because you could reproduce images of it, right? And people were writing about it. Even if you don't have the surviving costumes and outfits, when you're reading back through something like the Marquis de Sard 18th century or into the 19th century, the characters are there.

Like I just realized that when you're saying like nuns, teachers, innocent serving girls and they're all these kink characters, aren't they? Well, you think about the Catholic Church. I mean, the aristocracy of the church were the priests and the nuns, right? And they ran their own powerful situations, right? And people are attracted to power. Some people are attracted to power. And some people and how that worked insin amongst, you know, homosexuality was rampant in these things.

Still is as far as I know. Because, you know, people are people. People have sexual desires and, you know, you go where you can get it, right? If you were a lesbian, this is a good place to get. get, right? And also the punishment situations, you know, the stories have it, I had a close friend in high school who had spent time in a Roman Catholic high school, and he had been like his, the nuns threw erasers at him and all kinds of stuff when he was, because he was a smart ass. And so he got, you know, punished quite a bit, right? And they were, you know, corporal punishment

were okay with the Catholic Church at that time. We're talking about the 50s, late 50s, or at least in the 60s, right? And so, you know, this punishment, these become the matriarchal. positions. I mean, Gene's dungeon has rooms for the medicine room for, you know, the nurse, right? Doctors and nurses. Yeah, all of these different locations. She's got spaces where these things can be performed because this is part of that kink world, right, is the women in power from the, you know, the modernist world. And this is modernism, in my opinion, is much of this because the only modernist subject was the white male. And so the rest of us were down below. So I think that that's

part of why these kinds of things still exist as modernism is still kind of, you know, creaking around in different elements in our society even now, right? Some of them are running for president, right? There's a dark kink. So, so bad. I also want to say that we don't want to kink shame, but some of them, Yes, some of them, I think, probably, you know, perform in their own way, right? Can I ask you about the history of the word fetish itself? Because that has quite a surprising history that I had no idea about. It begins as a term.

So the Portuguese sailors back, and I think the 16th, 17th century, would sail down to the coast of Africa to buy ivory and spices and all kinds of things off because this is what a trading area, right? And I think the Ivory Coast was like one of the key things. The practice in some of the peoples there, they had their beautiful sculptures, you know, which eventually Picasso, you know, copies from, for cubism, of these sort of totems of people.

And they would pound nails in for wishes, right? So their nail fetishes, they were called, So when they would stand out sometimes in front of their houses for certain kind, it stands in, a fetish stands in for something you cannot have yourself. It stands in for a practice of either spiritual or erotic desires, right? They stand in. And so these Portuguese sailors would grab these things and bring them up the coast. And they were fascinated by these sculptures with all of these nails. And it's very kind of scary.

A lot of museums have these nail fetishes already in there. But fetish comes from, I think, Portuguese is what they called this thing, right? So it begins to appear, I think, in different catalogs, in different dictionaries, as this, you know, this totem that stands in for desire. Or magic. You know, this is where you put your wishes. A magic, right, right? That there is this way in which it operates.

from the inner desire to a thing to put wishes on, right? Wishing on a star, the star becomes a fetish, is fetishized as a thing that you wish upon in order to perhaps send your desire someplace that is an object in the field of vision that might be a repository of, you know, desire. Even though you know, see, this is how this works, even though you know that star is not going to, on some level, it's not going to make you. get this, right? We do it anyway because you never know, right? Maybe this time it will. And that's where fetish comes in. This is exactly the way the African people were using these nail fetishes.

It was just a custom, an artistic custom that they were using at this time frame, you know, and the Portuguese sailors, you know, this was fascinating to them, right? Because this is art. This is probably the only time they ever saw something artistic, you know, right? other than the stuff that they're traveling with. These are lower-class, you know, working people who are literally illiterate and, you know, maybe have never seen this stuff. But they are fascinated by these sculptures and they take them, you know, back up to Portugal and they kind of drift through France and, you know, Italy and Spain and whatnot.

And then as soon as this concept, right, has always been there for all peoples, right? There are always, you know, I do Japanese, you know, cultural history and they even back in the back, early days, they had these sort of gods and goddesses. You know, this is the Jungian archetypal thing, right? And he talks about it as well, right, as these archetypes that we have ancestor worship in Japan, where you worship your ancestors to say, I need to have this. Will you help me get this? You know, this is the kind of, it's operative in the human being, this notion of, I know, nevertheless, you never know, right? Maybe this time I can get my wish if I wish on this object, right?

And there's always an object that is the repository, right? And what happened in the fetish scene in late 19th century is it gets to be the woman who is the deep below in society. They have certain power images in terms of their childhood. And so they wish upon this woman. and she might, you know, in this exchange of master's slave, might actually, this might make me feel better, right, or something, right? And Gene will tell you that a lot of the clients she has are men of power, men with money.

I've heard that. I've heard power is a funny, old thing, you know, the way. I've always thought about kink and maybe not just kink, but sex play in general. I've always thought of it is it's like a space where adults, I'm going to be very careful how I phrase this, a space where adults do what children do and we play. Yes. Like when you, you know, it's a BDSM thing. Like it's become sexual, but we are inventing characters the way that children do.

We're creating stories the way that they do. We are investing in the fantasy game, the way that little kids do, but it's adult. Yeah. Yon would say it's in our psyche. It's built that way. That's why the archetypes exist. They set up this, you know, category of desire, right? What I can't have, I don't like, is a child you cry, right?

I want this, right? As adults, we go, yeah, you know, what are these things under my chin? You know, it's like these are wrinkles. How did this happen, right? When did this happen? I wish these would go away. Why? Because, you know, if you desire a romantic relationship, that's only for women.

That's only young women, right? That's what the category has been set up as, right? That's what the archetype is, right? And that's exactly how it works, right? We're set up for this in our own making. What I think maturity is, really, is when you are able to negotiate with these desires in you, to understand that, no, you may not ever get that. But you have to find happiness in what you do have.

A mature person is able to reconcile your desires that you cannot have in some way with your reality, right, so that you can live every day with not feeling like you've been deprived, right? And I think that in some senses, Jean knows this, I think, also. And she's always sort of working in a kind of, she's almost like a psychologist. I mean, oh, she is. I've talked to her a lot, right, about things that, and she's just got a wisdom that's, I think, in part from her experience of work, with a lot of people in deep trauma about their desires, right? I'll be back with Frenchie after this short break.

Just to take it out of a slightly less theoretical framework and into sort of the practicalities of this stuff, I'm going to guess that the invention of vulcanized rubber helped fetish fashion. Well, two ways. One of the sources I read on fetish stuff talks about World War I rubber raincoats that they gave to soldiers during World War I, which, you know, was a horrible, horrible war. And that smell of that old rubber, all you had for, let's just say, sexual release was, you know, the dude next to you.

And that that becomes one of the desired materials of pink. Oh, hello. Right. Yeah. And also then as vulcanized rubber and all of these different rubber, now it's like these beautiful, you know, Gene has this incredible, wardrobe of rubber, right? And she does a lot of rubber balls. We do one here locally every year. Now it's very moldable. It can be on your body, but not only is it moldable, but you can

like stuff it with things. She has this one outfit with like giant boobs on it. And then even the vulva is like pulled out and made into this giant vaginal, you know, sort of sculpture between the legs. And it's a full mask head to toe costume that she bears, right? It's quite dramatic. And she has the skirt that goes with it, that's these big balloons of rubber that follow behind her like a bridal veil. Absolutely spectacular. So I think that rubber, because of its malubility and because its ability to like fit over the body and really show the body at its best, pull in, you know, the little love handles that have grown up around your waist, they squish them in, they tighten everything, they make your body a little bit better than it is.

and yet very much a sexual thing, right? You're nude but not, right? Yeah. Fetish fashions start to really happen with rubber, I think, is where they do it. You know, it's no longer just, you know, 19th century underwear. But you began to sort of start to make stuff, right, that's specific to fetish wear as opposed to just fashions that, you know, you've taken underpants and changed them a little bit, right?

I know about the 1920s, there were sure. shops in Paris dedicated for fetish wear, where the designer's his name completely escapes me. But I can see her in my mind. She's blonde. Yeah, it's like. Eva Richard. There it is. Yeah.

Y-V-A. Richard. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Well, and, you know, I think that a lot of dominatrix, you know, had, you know, seamstresses that worked for them that made special things. And, you know, because right away velvet, which was, you know, is commonly. Oh, velvet.

it very sexy and satins and things because satins can really know do some of the same things that rubber can do a lot of this stuff was then being made for the fetish stage right i think for the the performer of fetish you know it starts to be done same thing with the objects like uh whips instead of just using carriage whips they start to like design whips for use on people wow they're also So they're ex kind of wood things with armed things. Yes. She says, I've heard of them. Yeah, yeah.

We won't go into that. But that was a bit quick on that one, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. But that's exactly what it is, right? And those kinds of things are quickly, I mean, and I think they were being made even in the late 19th century. I think as soon as we started doing this, women started to say, ah, this is a profession I can do. And I'm going to get paid a lot for it because it's secret, right?

And so there were lots of dungeons, as we call them now, right? Jean has a dungeon. It's a separate house from where she lives and where she works. It's her professional place. You walk in and there are all these whips and kinds of handcuffs and stuff along the wall and you're just like, yo. Because that's where she can operate. She can allow the fantasy to be more enormous, right?

And this was part of the development. I think is not only is it the person, but it's the objects in the field of vision, because vision is this huge part of building the world that you wish to be in, that your desire wishes to reside in, right? So they build the world as well as they're just trying to complete the experience more. Jean can tell you about this because she knows how it works and so forth, but a lot of it is building as much of that. visual field with objects and with an operator, which is the dominatrix, to make this happen, right, to make the fulfill the desire, right? And a lot of them are very similar, apparently, right? There are similar kinds of desire, mainly because that's maybe where they learned it. They went to a fetish club and saw that and said, I want to do that, right? One person told me,

And this guy became one of my best friends in the community. He was like the size of a linebacker, right? He was giant, right? And he went to one of these shows and said, you know, he was an orphan. He had been given to a family who really didn't want him except the little girls did. His sisters and, you know, and they babyed him and all this stuff. And he was trying to figure out where was he? What did he desire, right?

And he realized he wanted to be an adult baby, which is a whole field, right? There's two different kinds and stuff like this. And he gave me so much information. But he told me that he recognized that for him, he never would have come to it. And if it hadn't been suggested to him in this atmosphere of the club, the Fetish Club, wherein you were allowed to do this, right? You were allowed to remove yourself from the everyday world and enter a potential place of desire, right? And as soon as he did, he said it enriched his whole life, right? He realized he was massively lonely and that this provided him with a world in which he could not only have friends who got him,

but also have this experience with Jean in which he could be a little girl, a baby girl, which is what he ended up dressing like, right? Massive clothes, the skirts the size of, I don't know what, but. And there are people who make these things, right? There's a whole industry around fetish. and a lot of them are making the fashions and the locations and the gadgets and whatnot. But I think that that's really how this happens, right? I think that's how we end up with a field of kink behaviors or desires that somehow fit this sort of field. It's not a, you know, it's not a totally bracketed world.

There are some that go outside of that. But I think that there's a way in which there's something that you can enter through in order to expand what you know. You know what I mean? We've kind of got this like evolving world and it's becoming more stylized and it's quite a closed community and it starts to become more,

I suppose more mainstream with the prevalence of pornography, pornographic magazines, at least it's more visibly accessible to people. So I'm interesting what you were saying very early on when you were talking about John Galliano and Alexander McQueen and I'd probably throw Vivian Westwood into this one as well.

Oh, absolutely. She's my queen. I love this girl. I miss her like crazy. Yeah, she's one of us. She's my generation. I love her so much. She's incredible. But they did very interesting things with kink fashion that brought it mainstream. You tell me what they did and what their work left us. Well, I think Vivian started it all. And she did it with the opening a store called Sex in London in the 70s. And there's this wonderful image that's still on the internet of she and her female workers with their pants down showing their butts, laughing like crazy, right? She changed something. Suddenly, there was this opening in the public world for kink, right?

And she was very open about her own kink, right? I love, there's also a picture of her stark nude sitting with her leg spread, her beautiful orange pub sitting there like, yeah, this is. is me, and I'm 60, screw you. She had that attitude, and she brought that kind of sincerity and truth about the sexual being into the public eye. And I think McQueen, who is this marvelous, his stuff is just extraordinary. I don't think there's anybody like him. The show, I saw the video of his spring, summer, 2001 show with the glass walls that fell to the side and all the moths flew out, and here's this nude, heavy woman, very kind of 19th century masked.

I was astonished by it. It was so incredible. He sets the stage for his own work by showing this piece of art that just still astounds me as performance art. I think it's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. And then around this woman marches his models with wearing his clothes. that are responding to the feeling of that, right? In a way, you know, his depression and so forth were made manifest

and then made to be presented as the better part of his art, right? He's an artist, right? And I think we have to understand now that there's a difference between fashion. Fashion is art when it's this kind of couture situation. It's not ready to wear. that's a whole different thing. That's clothes. I forget who it was. I think it was Dior who said women design clothes, men design costumes. And that may be true, you know, in the fashion world. I don't know whether, I'm sure they knew each other, Vivian and McQueen. I think that they,

he accelerated what she began. And her own stuff was very eccentric and very much her own dreams, her own fashion, her own style. And her husband, I think, is trying to bring this through. I don't know that he's as successful as she is because I don't think he is her. And I respect him for trying to keep it going, but, you know, I don't know that he can, right? But then Gagliano, who is completely takes the fetishware that's real, that's, you know, out there in the studios, in the dungeons, and he puts them outside as fashion, right? He takes fetish wear and puts it on as design and walks it out. Just to play devil's advocate, both McQueen and Galecone have been accused of displaying violence towards women in their fashion, which is specifically related to their use of fetish wear.

What do you think about that? I don't agree. I think it's because they don't understand what they're doing, right? Yes, it looks like it's, you know, the female has become in modernity, and Laura Mulvey talks about this a lot, has become the in modernity through film, really, the Hollywood notion the girl has become the object of desire, right? And she has been written in such a narrowly defined way that she can't move from that. That's the young starlet, that's the Marilyn Monroe, you know, that's all of these sort of young girls. And I think both McQueen and Gagliana do is give them

power while wearing these things. What they don't like about it is they don't match the nice little submissive girl that used to be walking out onto the walkway, right, onto the fashion ramp. Instead, these are powerful women. These are kind of scary women, right? That are walking out. And I think that's what they really don't like. It's the violence is all theirs. It's in the view. It's in the observer is seeing the violence, right? The violence against women is the violence that their desire is evoken through this thing, right? This is just, leather straps. These are leather straps and a leather corset. And if you understand the kink world and the BDSM world, you can see where that's from. And it's from a space of play and

power exchange, which is effectively what BDSM is, is its exchange of power plays, isn't it? So I've never quite agreed with that. No, I totally don't agree with that. And I think that they're kind of throwing the violence of this straight man right back in his face. in my opinion. It's like, you know, it's like, oh, yeah. But this is what you're thinking, right? You want to be in that place. You want to be the one to wear the straps and the corset, right?

Because you want to be the powerful one in this thing, right? And it's also guilt. Violence against women happens all the time, continually. And it's usually husbands against wives, right? This is about an art piece that empowers women, right? That woman is carrying the whip, not the guy, right? And yet it's reversed in society. Women are constantly being killed and beaten up and so forth by men.

And not so much women doing men, although I've thought about it once in a while. But there's – but I think that's the rub there, right? And I think Vanessa Friedman, who is a marvelous writer for The New York Times, she has had a great article this morning about fashion where she's like going, can we have enough of the, you know, bare boobs thing? Can we get over that, please? And I'm like, yeah, exactly. It's like, who does that serve?

Right. But you know what I mean? She talks about this a lot about this sort of the violence against women and so forth. And she's sort of put forth a discussion recently that, you know, all of the big houses have new directors and they're all gay men. And she's like, fine. But where are the women? Why are the women? Is there no women female voices in here?

And so she's sort of, you know, bringing up a question, I think, is. it might be part of what might be have to be discussed in the fashion world in terms of this kind of thing. I mean, I don't blame McQueen and Galliano. They're doing something that they are, they're living through in their lives and their desires, right? And they're also empowering the female walkers across the thing. Because nobody sincerely wears these things. I mean, sometimes, you know, Hollywood movies they'll use.

No, no, it's just that you don't do. that, right? Unless you're in the kink, you have to go to a dungeon to actually wear this stuff, right? And then it's the dominatrix. That's who these models are. They're walking out as dominatrix. That's the whole point, right? And the fact that they say that that's violence against women. Oh, I don't think so, not normally. I mean, it happens. There are women who want that same thing from Gene, right? But it's mostly men, right, that are looking for this. So I think it's really interesting. that there's like, oh, it's a violence against women. Well, yeah, they ought to know.

Frenchie, you have been incredible and fascinating to talk today. And my final question to you is, and it's a little bit unfair because you don't have a crystal ball. But as someone that studied the history, the development, the use of fetish wear, where do you see it going? Do you think it will ever become mainstream, like properly mainstream? Or do you think that even if it did, that would lose something? What's our relationship with it going forward? think you have seen in like prom dresses that the corset is coming out in prom dresses and things like that. I mean, they don't have the same effect at all. They're kind of sweet and, you know, a little bit

old-fashioned and, you know, they do show your boobs up and nice. It looks good, you know. So I think it comes out in ready-to-wear in these kinds of situation. You can't wear it like to go to the grocery store. I mean, you can, but who would? But I think in the future of, I think fetish wear is changing, I'm sure, and this is something Gene would know, but I think a lot of it is going to skin suits and, you know, these kinds of things where it's a little bit more moving away from the idea of the corseted woman, right? And there's still whips and all that kind of stuff. As I say, there is this bracketed, you know, wardrobe of fetish at this point.

But there are, you know, diversions from it. And, you know, people like Jean designed a lot of their own stuff. And so I think that it will change, I'm sure, as modernism gets more past and, you know, this sort of contemporary situation where people are picking from all kinds of styles all over the place. You know, there is no ism at this point, right, except sort of contemporary, you know, sites, if you will. And that's the way the art historians talk about it. There isn't such a thing, but I think it will always be there as a desirable kind of persona that one of, one that the dominatrix can fulfill, right?

I think it's one of those characteristics that they can wear. You know, in a lot of these fetish scenarios that people request, sometimes she's dressed as a nurse. Sometimes she, you know what I mean? It's like a performance, right? She's fulfilling. It's a little theatrical performance. And I think that just as there's, you know, changes in fashion, there'll be changes in fetish as well, eventually, I think. Branchi, thank you so much for talking to me today.

You have been wonderful. It was so much fun. Oh, yeah. I love doing this. I could go on all afternoon. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I'm at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I'm a professor there.

I'm on academia. If they wanted to contact me and get your book. They can get my book. They can get your book. Thank you so much for joining me today. You've been so much fun. You bet. And I'll see you soon.

Thank you so much, French. That was absolutely fascinating. And you certainly painted a vivid picture. As Frenchie mentioned, Mistress Jean Bardo played a significant role in educating her about this world. So I had to have a chat with her myself. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. Only Jean Bardo, how are you doing?

How are you doing really well? Thanks for asking. We've been talking to Frenchie, and she has been absolutely singing your praises. She is your number one fan. And we just thought, we have to meet this person. She has told us about your work as a dominatrix. And I suppose my first question, of all the billions of questions I want to ask you, how did you come to be a dominatrix?

Was there a moment when you realized, this is it? This is the thing that I want to be. There was that moment, but it didn't happen just immediately. It was a progression of different events in my life. I always knew it was different. I grew up in a very small town, very Catholic, very small town where creativity was not something that was offered.

So fled the small town, came to the big city of Minneapolis, was overwhelmed. I loved it. Went to art school. And that's where I kind of fell into the Kink community. I befriended some people that felt that got me. At the time, I probably had no idea what was going on. They just seemed really cool people to hang out with. They did really fun stuff.

They looked really cool and different. They expressed themselves well and creatively. And that's where I met French. She was in art school. She was one of my professors. So getting to know people in the Kink community, it just kind of snowballed. I, you know, met more people on the lifestyle, met a woman who was internationally well known and also living here, who was a dominatrix. And we clicked. I started just working with her. I found her because one of my friends I met in art school was shooting her. videos for her content. So we all just became friends and I started working with her and then it just kind of got bigger and bigger and my hill got steeper, became a mountain and my snowmall just kept rolling and rolling and getting humongous and it's still going. I love that. That makes perfect sense to me. I came from a small town as well. I can understand how when you get to the big city and you meet like-minded folk. It's like a, it's like an earthquake. It was like, it was just like,

oh my God, I'm in my, you know, I'm in my place. For anyone that's listening that isn't entirely sure what a dominatrix is, how would you define that for yourself? When you say, I'm a dominatrix, what does that even mean to you? God, people go immediately to, you know, the woman dressed in black and corseted in big heels and has a whip and, you know, she tortures people with that whip. They go right there. But being a dominatrix is a little more complicated than that. You're in someone's head. guiding them on a journey to make them feel normal, to express themselves normally, to touch something that not a lot of people are going to understand, take them to places where they can relieve

a ton of stress. It's a million different things. When you refer to it as the lifestyle, a moment of two ago, I've referred to that before and read about it as being the lifestyle. And I think that's fascinating because it's very easy to think of BDSM and Kink as just, sex is just it's a sex act. So when it's referred to as a lifestyle, that changes the dynamic of it very much. How much of your lifestyle would you say is taken up by the dominatrix persona? I don't say 24-7 is probably, I don't know, percent, like 90, 95 percent of my... This is who you are. Yeah, this is what I do. This is who I am. I'm, you know, I'm lucky enough. I have a dungeon separate from my house. It's supportive.

me. It's been supporting me for a long time. I'm going into my 30th year of doing this. So I've had, you know, clients. I've known people that long. And, you know, even in my personal relationships, you know, I don't date vanilla people. I did once and it, no, no. Doesn't, doesn't work. They don't get it. We've been talking to Frenchie about the history and the development of fetish wear, of fetish fashion. And that's absolutely fascinating. I really wanted to ask you, how important is the clothing in what you do in your performance? I mean, presumably you could just get rid of all the clothing and do it completely naked and probably have. But for you, what does the, what does the clothing bring to the performance to the lifestyle? Sure. So going back to going

to art school, I went to art school because I, in high school, was watching Terry Mugler in Vogue. his corsets and how he dressed women. And that's where I was like, I want to do that. That's why I went to art school. I wanted to create that powerful woman image. I didn't know that at the time. I just was like, I'm going to go make costumes for people. I'm going to go make clothing for people.

You know, that's what I'm going to go to art school for. So way back when, it was always about getting dressed and dressing up and feeling a certain way after you're wearing a certain something. For every session I have with someone, it's I dress how I'm feeling. And what I'm going to do with this person is kind of how I pick out an outfit. I mean, I can dominate in a pair of sweats and socks, but, you know, there's fetishes about that too. And that's kind of fun for me. But if I'm going to do something by my own intention, I'm going to put the heels on in the corset on and put myself in bondage of sorts. I love that. Just be devil's advocate for just a second there. I love the story of like you saw

the corset and the heels and there was something in you that went that one and you referred to it as powerful. There would be people that would say a corset and heels are the exact opposite of that that they are these cages of women and that they mean that women can't walk blah blah blah. What's your take on that? Why do you read it as it's a powerful thing? It makes me stand up taller. I feel larger than life sometimes. I feel like I can just go conquer things. When I have those certain tensions on my body or certain heights, you know, I put a pair of heels on, I'm taller. It takes a bit of practice to walk in heels. It doesn't happen naturally. Could you tell me the story of how you acquired your own dungeon? Because it's a hell of a sentence

to say for anyone who's not in the lifestyle is when you say, I have my own dungeon. There'll be people listening going, I'm sorry, you have a what, a what, what, what? Tell us what your dungeon is and where it's from. It's 30 years of me collecting gear and furniture, and I'm lucky where it's not where I live. It's a separate space, so I can escape from it if I want to or I can just go and play what I want to. My answering your question is just collecting everything. Tell us a few key pieces that you've got in your dungeon, your favorite toy. that you've got in there.

Oh, my God. Everything has some kind of memory to it, where I got it, how I got it. So you walk in my dungeon and it is a corridor where there's a coat closet. You go through blue velvet curtains and my dungeon colors on the first floor are purples and blues and it's very moody, very gothy. Most of my furniture is black. I have a full suite of fetters gear from the UK where your first thing you'll see is, six-foot leather padded wheel where there's tie points on it and I can tie someone to it and

spin them around. To the right of that, I have my collection of rubber gas masks, military gas masks, vintage gas masks. They're all lit from behind so they kind of glow from the wall. Continue going. I have a nice, on the other side, I have a nice beautiful throne I sit on. It's kind of on a step up in the corner of the room, very black and shiny. and padded with some silver satin, silk satin. Next room, there's a birthing chair that is... A birthing chair. Wow. Burthing chair from the 80s.

It's very medical looking. It goes up and down, backwards and forwards, and so I can plant someone in there and maneuver them in different ways. There's mirrors on the ceiling so they can see what I'm doing to them as they're bound to this chair. Other moving mechanical chairs, another queening chair in the corner. And then from there there's a rubber room. Walls are all rubberized.

And then there's a scaffolding set in the center that has springs and cables, a wench in the center of that where I can lift people and move them around and sling them up or hang cages in the center of it or stuff. Wow. Have you ever forgotten anyone was in there and went home and just left someone dangling from the ceiling? No. I would never.

I would never know. I might make them think I did that. Oh, nice. But I really would not do that. No. Oh, I love that. So if someone's coming for a session with you for the first time, I'm going to assume that they can't just, it's not like an Uber,

you just book it and turn up. There must be quite a lot of conversations. What's the sort of the process before someone can even get to be suspended from your ceiling? For the first thing I asked them to do is send me a letter of introduction. in that letter I request who they are, what the fantasy is about, what they want to explore, what they've explored in the past,

if they've seen a mistress before who that was, if I can use them as a reference, and then from that, I'll read that and then just pick their brain, three, four emails back and forth. And then if I feel comfortable that they're serious enough about coming to my studio, then I'll have a phone call with them

and connect with them on a phone, phone conversation and then from there I'll see how I feel about them and then book them or not book them tell them we're not a good match. And what sort of safety procedures do you have when the session is underway? How do you guard your safety and their safety in the dungeon? Well, my safety, depending how new they are, if they don't have a reference from another mistress, I'll have one of my submissives hang out in a cage or in another room just to be in the space. And then I'll have a word that I shout to them if something would ever happen. Nothing would. It's never happened. Thank God. For their safety, I give them safe words.

I, you know, hopefully they tell a friend where they are what they're doing when they go there and then when they leave that they're okay. I mean, I let them figure out their own safety things. I recommend a few things, but I let them deal with how they want to deal with that safety. hopefully, you know, we're consenting adults. When we're in play, we're in the middle of play, they have safe words they can use, where they just throw out a word. And one word that I'll give them is just a word to say, we're done.

I'm not okay with this. This is not okay. En scene. NC, no questions asked, unless you want to talk about it, you know. Do you have like a decompression time after the immediate session? I imagine that must be quite important, just a kind of like a space to kind of breathe and get back into your regular roles and kind of check in. Check in, see how it went, see if I got them, see if I understood them, see how the journey was.

Sometimes they aren't able to answer those questions. They're also mumble, jumble, and they're mush. So I check in with them the next day, maybe later that day, just depending how I feel of how they left the space. Sometimes they just need a good cry. Sometimes they can turn it off and they can just be done and get dressed in me. They don't need anything. So, you know, everyone's like different. In a completely different line of questioning,

one of the things I was talking to French about is when fetishware, kinkwear, BDSMware started to become mainstream, when we started to see PVC trousers and harnesses and things cropping up, what's your take on that? Are you, if you see somebody in a, in a pair of PVC trousers, you kind of be like, yes. Or do you kind of feel more like heavy metal fans when they see people wearing band t-shirt? Like, you shouldn't be doing that. You're not a proper hardcore fan.

What's your thought on it going mainstream? You know, people should just be able to wear what they want to wear and express themselves. However, they want to express themselves. You know, coming from the 80s, seeing Terry Mugler and those corsets turning me on to that kind of thing and seeing how sexuality can be presented in, you know, a certain way. And, you know, now people are wearing latex going to a concert or latex going to a nightclub. Or you see all the music videos with all the ladies with the latex and the corsets and the harness. You know, I love seeing it.

It's awesome. I know a lot of kingsters, especially the older ones, well, here in Minnesota anyway, they always want to kind of keep it underground, keep it is what they call. you know, within their own or sacred or whatever, however they want to do it. But me, I'm just like, hey, have fun expressing yourself. Feels good, wear it. But yeah, I've seen it. You see it so much now.

To my final question, completely random, but I actually bought a pair of PVC trousers just last week. I think it was because I've been speaking to French and I was talking to you. I was like, I'm going to give this a go. And I put them on and just because I've got quite chunky thighs, they just squeak and stick together in the thighs. And it's really difficult to walk in them. And I thought, I'm talking to Jean. I'm going to ask her if she has tips on how to walk in a pair of PVC pants when you're off down the supermarket. They're PVC and not rubber, not latex.

Yeah. And so you're squeating in between your thighs. You can powder them up a little bit, like just kind of cover it and powder so they're not so sticky. Yeah, I can do that. What about oil? Would that be okay? Oil is going to melt your fabric. Right.

Okay. Thank God I spoke to you. I mean, it's not going to melt it as soon as it touches it. But if you put oil on it and it sits there for a while, it's going to get, it'll be fine for a minute. But then it's going to start breaking down the PVC. And then it's going to get gummy and then even stick even worse over time. Like it doesn't happen immediately, but it happens over a bit of time. Thank God that I asked you that because I would have wrecked my new PVC pants.

You can also take silicone lube. Silicon lube. Only silicone. based, not an oil base, but like a silicone lube and just do a little bit and go, scoop it in there and it'll be nice and glassy. Honestly, if anyone comes to hug me, I'm just going to straight out there, just all lubed up and shiny. Gene, you have been an absolute treat to talk to.

If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Jean-Bardo.com. I have a YouTube show called the Jean-Bardo show on YouTube. I break down kink and make it kind of user-friendly for the beginners. Amazing. Thank you so much for talking to me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. Oh, thanks. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Frenchian mistress Jean Badoe for joining me.

And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can drop us an email at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from Sex and the Aztec Empire to Sexuality in Ancient Greece, all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

Join me again betwixt the sheets of The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.