Celebrity Latex Fashion: Cardi B in the Nyx Cosmetics commercial screened during February’s Super Bowl. Somewhere under all that posterised colour, she’s wearing latex by Venus & Violet

CELEBRITY LATEX FASHION: DOES IT BENEFIT THE WIDER LATEX SCENE?

If you follow the Libidex blog, you will probably have noticed that the phenomenon of celebrity latex fashion has not diminished with the arrival of 2024. Quite the reverse in fact. As noted in an earlier March blog item, the prevalence of latex-wearing celebs at high profile events like Paris Fashion Week and The Brit Awards led this year to a whole new category of fashion faux pas. Mainstream media commentators were seemingly so keen to spot latex on participants that they wrongly assumed leather and pvc outfits were latex — a complete reversal of their traditional habit of identifying actual latex as some other shiny fabric!

What this suggests is that the mainstream fashion world has at last become acclimatised to latex as a legitimate wardrobe choice, rather than just some quirky diversion done for effect. Indeed, it can be argued that latex in the mainstream has finally transcended its earlier role of mainly spicing up this or that designer’s catwalk show just to garner more attention by being a bit sexier and edgier than the others.

However, it’s fair to wonder: how much does celebrity latex fashion actually matter to regular latex fans? Do they actually derive any benefit from it? After all, if you’re an existing or potential Libidex customer, you probably consider yourself already sufficiently motivated to wear latex, without needing it to be first endorsed by celebrities or paraded on Paris catwalks.

British TV presenter A J Odudu has shown a distinct fondness for wearing latex for her screen appearances. This catsuit is by Elissa Poppy

But, while it’s a fair bet that, at the nerdier end of the rubberist scale, there will still be resistance to celebrities ‘hijacking’ latex (as they would see it) for the purpose of self-promotion without any genuine kinky intent, it seems that latex fans on the whole do see a value in the exposure latex gets through celebrity latex fashion endorsements of one kind or another.

By “endorsements”, let’s be clear that we’re not talking about celebrities being paid to advertise a specific latex brand. It’s the endorsement of the idea of wearing latex that interests us — and this arises simply from seeing a well-known figure in latex. That’s what we react to first — though of course, curiosity about which designer is responsible for the garment may well follow. But even if information about the source of the outfit is not available, we can still enjoy the image of the latex-clad personality, with its reinforcement of the material’s obvious power to stimulate.

Public displays of celebrity latex fashion, in a context where most other folk are not in fetish attire, can be truly intoxicating to fetish sensibilities. And it must surely help, if you’re a bit nervous about taking the plunge, to see latex fashion worn by people with public reputations to consider who obviously don’t believe they’re going straight to hell for wearing the stuff — although we understand that is still possible if you’re doing it right!

Singer Palomo Faith, seen outside NYC’s Radio City Music Hall where she was guesting on the Today Show, is another Brit with an open love of latex, which might have developed during her earlier time as a Torture Garden performer

There’s also the potential bonus of finding out that a latex-wearing celeb is a genuine kinkster — that their relationship with rubber is more than just skin deep. But even when a celeb’s interest is only superficial, you can remind yourself that they’re wearing the stuff because, at the very least, they think it makes them look good! (Usually anyway. We’re still not sure what effect Sam Smith thought he was having at last year’s Brits in his inflatable, insectoid Hari outfit. But it certainly got him talked about.)

While latex-wearing by public figures may encourage those of us who like the material to indulge in it more often, it does also seem reasonable to consider the effect of celebrity latex fashion on the specialist brands that comprise the dedicated latex clothing industry. One of the issues that comes up in this regard is that, while more celebrities than ever seem to be wearing latex, there has been no proportionate increase in the choice of brands providing the celebs with their outfits. Currently you can count almost on the fingers of one hand the number of latex labels that get regularly credited with this kind of high-visibility work.

There are a couple of British labels and a couple of American labels getting most of the credits, along with the recently arrived French label Avellano. The latter’s employment of technical processes that add textures, strength and ease of wearing to latex, combined with a strong fashion-facing design approach, has powered it to the upper echelons of celebrity latex fashion in a very short time.

Rita Ora wearing Avellano latex for a performance at London’s Heaven, shortly before the designer’s Paris Fashion Week debut a year ago

At this rarified end of the spectrum, there are also a few UK-based latex specialists who produce clothes for those international design houses and couture brands that sometimes include latex in their collections. This kind of work is usually covered by NDAs so it’s extremely rare for any of these relationships to be made public.

However, one recent exception was the work done by newish British company MMLatex to produce garments for London-based Spanish fashion designer Luis De Javier, with both brands openly discussing the collaboration online. This was refreshing to see, but it’s unlikely to set a trend, as protecting your sources is a major obsession across the fashion industry.

Those latex designers who do successfully straddle both the traditional latex market and the celebrity latex fashion scene will of course tell you that they get that business because of the high quality of their design and manufacturing work, and also through their hard-earned reputations for looking after their clients as they expect to be looked after.

But they would surely also admit that at this level, the role of stylists can be extremely important too. Stylists are often the ones that build actual relationships with the designers on behalf of their famous (or potentially famous) clients. And surprisingly perhaps, when it comes to latex, stylists don’t always seem to be as adventurous as one imagines they could be, given the wealth of latex design talent that’s available just in the UK, never mind worldwide.

Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams as Jordan in the Danny Boyle-directed FX mini-series Pistol. She’s relaxing in the show’s recreation of Westwood/McLaren shop SEX, which was kitted out with latex clothing by Libidex

In short, making high quality custom garments for the celebrity latex fashion scene is great work if you can get it. But it isn’t the only game in town. Libidex, for example, often supplies latex clothing for movies, TV dramas and music videos. A commission we talked about last year involved providing a whole shop-full of latex for a recreation of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s King’s Road shop SEX in the Danny Boyle-directed FX mini-series Pistol. Sometimes having a large selection of latex items that can be supplied at short notice is a boon in itself!