Fetish Festival blocked by court ruling

CBS Baltimore is reporting that a fetish festival that was supposed to happen this weekend coming at the DuBurns Arena in Canton, Baltimore has been cancelled after the new owners of the arena, Coppermine, got a court injunction to prevent the event taking place.

Apparently, a contract had been signed by the previous management of the arena.  And Coppermine were so desperate to get out of the contract that they asked a court to intervene.

Now, there were arguments about the event not being right for the area, and that the event would have contravened the new owner's policies, but at the end of the day, a contract is a contract, and should be honoured.  Just think, if they are prepared to find a way to not honour this, then they could be prepared to find a way to not honour anything else that they might happen to personally disagree with.

Would they find a way to not honour a wrestling show perhaps, becuase of health and safety concerns?  Or maybe a fashion show might not get the go-ahead because the outfits being modeled might be too racy?

If I were organising an event in Baltimore of any kind, I'd be reticent about hiring the DuBurns Arena now, as I'd be wondering if they might find some obscure reason not to honour the contract.

Viewpoint - Mrs Palm & The Christian Right

Myleene Klass in PVC

Myleene Klass dons PVC for a photo shoot in the current issue of Look magazine here in the UK.  The trouble is, if you go to the website for Look, you’ll find nothing about it.  No pictures, no interview, nothing.

Instead, the Daily Mail covers the story for the online audience, including the pictures.  Of course they put their usual ultra-conservative spin on it, but it would have been better to have the story on Look’s website with the original context to link to.

Magazine websites annoy the hell out of me.  They publish these stories and photoshoots in their magazines, but their websites have nothing from the magazines in them, absolutely nothing!

Putting stories that you publish in your magazine onto your website is a way of promoting the magazine and getting the online audience involved.  But without these articles on your website, you have no way of generating online interest in your website.

Get your act together!

Victoria Beckham's gravity defying PVC thigh boots?

Victoria Beckham is known to have worn some quite fetish orientated outfits before, but this one is a different level entirely. According to the Daily Mail, she's wearing PVC thigh boots that are without heels. True, the boots have no heels, but on closer inspection, they do not look like PVC to me. PVC is never that dull, nor that tightly fitted. These are latex pony boots. Latex is similar to PVC or Vinyl in that it can be very shiny, but without care and attention, latex can turn very dull. And pony boots are simply boots without heels.

I never expect the Daily Mail to get it right, but they do seem to have a penchant for picking out the fetish type outfits that some celebrities wear. I wonder why...

Posh legs it in PVC, not leather.

The Daily Star's headline "Posh Gets Leathered" got me interested earlier. Victoria Beckham is not known for wearing much leather. In fact, it was somewhat of a surprise when she turned up to the Spice Girls press conference in what looked like a PVC bustier and leggings.

Well, she's back in PVC again, only this time it was treated to look like leather. There was no way you could have leggings that tight made from proper leather. In fact, the Daily Mail called it correctly by calling her "PVC Posh".

I'm certainly not a fan of Victoria Beckham, but certain style choices always interest me, and the fact she chose PVC not real leather is interesting. Perhaps the fetish styling of PVC and latex remains a favourite amongst celebrities, rather than real leather.

PETA is not Protecting our Environment Today at All!

Adult move star Jenna Jameson is fronting a new campaign by PETA, wanting people to "Pleather Yourself" by wearing plastic-based alternatives to Leather.

Now, I've no problem with the idea of wearing plastic, I have PVC trousers myself. But they seem to be so caught up in animal rights, that they haven't figured out that more plastic leather clothes also equals more damage to the environment. You see, Plastic is derived from Oil, and since we are running out of Oil reserves, as well as the plastics themselves being quite damaging if left to attempt to rot, you see just how a single minded approach to an issue can fail to see something just as bad.

"... By choosing pleather, you are keeping the fun alive and helping animals! What could be better?" How about leaving a planet for our children and grandchildren to actually live on?

Swapping M&S for S&M? How about adding...

This story is over a week old, but I've only just discovered it, and quite frankly, I find the story, or perhaps I should say the column, quite ridiculous.

Hilary Alexander's fashion tastes are as conservative as her newspaper's political leanings. So the idea of fashion incorporating ideas from the world of fetish fill her with dread. Exhibit A...

But is Dolce & Gabbana's 21st-century take on the chastity belt an amusing wheeze – no more than the next logical step from the corset and stiletto for eye-wateringly restrictive clothing? Is it art? Or, more worryingly, does it represent the acceptable face of a form of "fashion torture" – the tip of the iceberg in terms of catwalk trends which have troubling overtones of a darker fetishism more painful than whittling your waist with a metal belt that digs into your ribcage?

Masks, hoods, suffocatingly tight head-dresses and strange metal contraptions which literally "cage" the models' bodies have become a kind of acceptable modern catwalk currency among the avant garde and the fringe element. They are often beguilingly described in artistic terms, but to those outside the rarified world of the fashionista, these kinds of designs provoke only feelings of shock or repulsion.

Well, maybe to you Hilary, but to me and others, we feel no shock or repulsion at all. The idea of a modern day chastity belt might be a little scary, but like so many other things, fashion and style comes full circle, back to ideas that were long since forgotten. And in that spirit, Hilary brings up ideas that should have been long since forgotten...

However, the "modern society" trend that Pugh espouses is not accurate according to Dr Helen Nightingale, a clinical psychologist based in Cheshire (www.helennightingale.com) who says that manipulating women in this way goes back centuries.

Manipulating women??? Oh please! I thought that whole notion went out with women's lib! Times change, fashions change. PVC was thought back in the 60s to be the futuristic material, only to come a cropper at the hands of parafin heating. Now it's back. Shoulder pads were the in thing in 80s fashion, but the 90s fashions did away with them, now they're back too.

Have a read of the article, so you can see just how ludicrous the whole thing is. Fetish is not taking over fashion, but a part of it, and the sooner people accept that, the better for everyone.

PVC clothing popular in celebrity circles?

It wasn't long ago I was talking about Girls Aloud and their latest look for their new video, called "Say No No No", PVC Catsuits.

But it seems as if they were following a trend that has been noted elsewhere. Fashionising's blog highlights the fact that at Glastonbury, Kate Moss was wearing a pair of PVC pants and highly inappropriate boots for the muddy surrounds. Then at the relaunch of the Spice Girls, Posh Spice aka Victoria Beckham was wearing a decidely un-posh pair of PVC jeans too.

Then Hilary Duff made an appearance in some faux-leather leggings.

Perhaps it is merely PVC's time now. When PVC was first introduced as the fabric of the future back in the 1960s, parafin heaters were the norm, and caused the PVC to melt or catch fire. Now, with central heating and air conditioning, PVC maybe finding it's mark as more than just a fetish fabric.

For more possible evidence that PVC is making something of a comeback, let me direct you to the Greta Constatine site, where the pictures of their latest collection show models wearing PVC gloves. Maybe there is something of a revival just beginning to happen.