Fetish - Fashion, Sex and Power (Hardcover)

Corsets, cruel shoes and boots, thigh-high black stockings, leather catsuits, and second-skin rubber...Today "everything from a fetishist's dream" appears on the fashion runways. Kinky clothes formerly seen only within sexual subcultures are now worn by club kids and socialites alike. Hitherto secret sexual practices (sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and transvestism) have become increasingly visible throughout popular culture. In Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power, noted fashion historian Dr. Valerie Steele explains why fetish fashion has gone mainstream.

"Steele is to fetish dressing what Anne Rice is to vampires," writes Christa Worthington of The Independent. Tracing the historic connections between fashion and fetishism, Steele explains why items like corsets, high-heeled shoes, silk underpants, and leather jackets have appealed to so many men and women. She provides provocative answers to such questions as: Is fetishizing the norm for males? Why do so many women love shoes? When the straps and stilettos of the dominatrix are featured in mainstream fashion magazines, what does it say about our society? She analyzes, for example, the "bondage" collection presented by the Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, which stirred much controversy, provoking The New York Times to ask whether it was "Chic or Cruel?" Steele marshals a dazzling array of evidence from pornography, psychology, and history to illuminate the complex relationship between fetishism and fashion, noting that, precisely because it seems so bizarre--why would someone be sexually excited by shoes?--fetishism shows how human sexuality is never just a matter of doing what comes naturally, it is always a psychological construction in which fantasy plays an important role.

Historically grounded and abundantly illustrated, Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power charts the boundaries of the normal and the "perverse," brilliantly showing how even the most unusual clothing fetishes form part of a continuum of behavior that enables everyone (male and female, gay and straight) to use clothing to express their social and sexual identities.