Canada’s National Post has written a rather lovely profile of Northbound Leather, their upcoming fashion show and fetish party in Toronto, and how kink has infiltrated mainstream culture and clothing. Here’s a sizeable chunk:
‘…I wind up a spiral staircase carpeted in leopard-print and eventually emerge on the third and topmost floor, the factory and design studio, with its stop-start whir of sewing machines and perfume of leather, PVC and something like glue in the air.
It’s here where I find Marty Rotman, Northbound Leather’s head designer and creative director, hunched over his drafting table. He’s just finished pressing a grid of dots into strips of black neoprene and is now chalking diagonal cross-hatching on the fabric with a ruler, a pattern to ensure the diamond-quilted stitching will be symmetrical. These strips are the padding under what will become quilted silver metallic leather police breeches, a custom job for a long-time leather-loving Northbound client. “This is why we have the reputation that we do,” he mutters.“I’m a bit anal.”
I keep the pun on the tip of my tongue to myself.
Northbound is how the family leather company has been known since 1987, transitioning from fringed Yorkville hippiedom into the shiny fetish destination it is today after a rebrand by second-generation owner George Giaouris. There’s a mood-lit brick-and-mortar store headquarters on Yonge and a bustling and — don’t say I didn’t warn you — totally NSFW shop online.
Everything down on the shop floor starts up here with Rotman — from initial ideas, sketches, patterns and technicals to the finished product, like the custom breeches he’s working on, and rolling racks bulging with the 54 fashion show looks he’s already finished. Both will be seen at Vanilla?, this year’s name for Northbound’s annual fetish party and fashion show. “This is our Christmas!” Rotman exclaims.
While Rotman personally designed all of the show looks, this time he stepped aside as the producer of the annual event; professional dominatrix Carolyn Kelly will be in charge.
This year’s Vanilla? theme (“a lot lighter than in past years,” Rotman explains) is designed to showcase Northbound’s more accessible, affordable garments and accessories. The kinder, gentler side of kink and fetish? The mainstream fashion version, certainly, and less intimidatingly hardcore. Thanks to the mainstreaming of the fetish fashion aesthetic — like Rotman’s favourite designer Thierry Mugler’s revival by Beyoncé, Kylie and Rihanna — the look is, “not just for the dungeon or the bedroom,” he says. The theme is strategic, to attract a new and younger customer base, because Northbound’s greatest strength may also be its weakness: “All our leather gear is made well enough that [customers] aren’t coming back all the time,” Rotman ruefully observes…’
Full article by Nathalie Atkinson here, and more details of next weekend’s “Northbound Live” event here if you happen to be in or near Toronto.
