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London dates in May – but is all still ‘fair’ in love and war?
LONDON DATES IN MAY – BUT IS ALL STILL ‘FAIR’ IN LOVE AND WAR?
May has barely arrived but is already looking like a busy month for fetish activities in the London area, with LAM (London Alternative Market), Charmskool, and Torture Garden all hosting or co-hosting London dates in May that, in competing for a chunk of Londoners’ disposable incomes, might also revive some old rivalries better left undisturbed.
As previously reported by this Blog, May 10 marks the launch of Le Boutique Bazaar successor event The Sunday Slick at LBB’s old (but now refurbished) venue For Your Eyes Only. Co-hosted by Charmskool and Torture Garden, this afternoon/evening combined fetish fair and social mixer will include fashion shows by Broke Boutique, Kerris Spencer and Riot Pony; performance by Letitia Delish; DJ sets by Allen TG (below), Camille Leon and Jamie Moon; chainmaille workshop by Nes Noir; latex repairs by Am Statik; and more.
Then later in the month, on May 22, Torture Garden will return to its newest (occasional) London venue, The Steel Yard in the railway arches under Cannon Street Station, for its May Ball. We’d like to give you a taste of who’s performing there, but three weeks before the event, TG hadn’t announced any performer names. However, we do know that Allen TG (below) will be one of the DJs! Busy man, huh?
Top image: Dolly Rotten aka @rotten.babe rocking FemDom handbag by Daddy’s Gurl, one of the accessory brands championed by Charmskool that you may well encounter on May 10 at the launch of The Sunday Slick at FYEO (photo: @hyder_Images)
And whaddya know? Just as we were preparing this article for publication, the hosts of London Alternative Market (LAM) finally confirmed in a newsletter what insiders have known for a while. Which is that, on Bank Holiday Sunday (May 3), LAM holds its last event at Forge (its “long-time home” since last September), before reopening at a much larger venue for its monthly markets from June onwards. That new LAM venue? It’s also The Steel Yard!
LAM’s organisers have simultaneously just released info for two other May dates near London that they’re hosting or co-hosting (links at bottom). But for a while longer they’re staying tight-lipped about any more details of their new set-up at The Steel Yard. However, we imagine that, if LAM is hoping to use the whole of that three-arch venue for its very first event there, it must be looking to at least double its vendor numbers to fill all the available space.
This might be no small challenge in the current financial climate, so perhaps it’s more likely that LAM will initially aim to populate the venue’s two main linked arches, with a view to working towards filling the separate third arch if and when it can generate sufficient vendor demand. We shall see.
We do hope, though, that the need to attract a lot more stallholders to fill even two of the three Steel Yard arches won’t see LAM feeling the need to pressurise potential vendors to support it exclusively. Because while LAM and LBB dates occasionally clashed in the past, the new Sunday Slick event replacing LBB will have a reduced market element with space for only about 20 stallholders. So even if every one of the small handful of erstwhile LBB vendors who also sold at LAM were prevented from having stalls at both Sunday Slick and LAM, this would be far more damaging to the individual vendors than to either of the fetish markets.
Those of us with longer memories may well recall an earlier period in the capital city’s fetish fair history characterised by some tiresome, not to say downright childish bouts of rivalry between ‘competing’ fair hosts. We doubt many in the fetish community really want to see that sort of thing blowing up again.
At the same time, we accept that when you’re LAM and have been holding your fairs on the first Sunday of every month since before some of us were even born, it would seem good manners if a less frequent event — such as LBB was, and Sunday Slick may also become — were not to choose its occasional dates to exactly clash with a monthly edition of LAM! Unless of course, such overlaps would actually enable more people to shop at both events on a single day — which is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
We also hope the rumour that LAM was discomfited by the proximity to its April edition of Easter’s new Fetish Weekend London’s two fetish fair days turns out to be fake news. Why might this have been an issue? Because the FWL Fair (curated by Charmskool) took place on Friday and Saturday April 3 and 4, while April LAM took place on Sunday April 5.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed this meant that over Easter Weekend 2026, there were actually three consecutive days of curated fetish shopping opportunities hosted by two independent retail hosts with largely complementary customer bases — Charmskool’s crowd being largely fashion-led and LAM’s being more BDSM/play-orientated.
So while it is true that the first two days would have given Charmskool/FWL the first bite of the weekend shopping cherry, Fetish Weekend London’s debut would have attracted fetish folk from much further afield than just London. And more than a few of these would surely have taken advantage of the availability of a third day’s shopping c/o LAM, catering for a largely different area of kinky tastes. If we’re right, this would have made FWL more of an Easter gift to LAM than a cross it was forced to bear!
However, we are aware that quite a few UK fetish folk felt they had other reasons to be grumpy about Fetish Weekend London, such as the new hosts’ initial use of the name London Fetish Weekend without permission from the founders of that earlier event. And outside the UK, FWL’s choice of Easter dates certainly didn’t go down well with some fans of Germany’s annual Easter Fetish Meeting, the not-for-profit pervy gathering at the Essen hotel previously used by the now-defunct Fetish Evolution Weekends.
Some German and Dutch supporters of the Essen event complained that they would have liked to attend the new Fetish Weekend London as well. There was a suggestion that it was a breach of the general understanding between organisers of international fetish events that they should endeavour to make sure their annual dates don’t clash (not that EFM makes much effort to present itself as ‘international’).
Unfortunately this ‘general understanding’ hasn’t always been shared by all event hosts. In the past, in fact, some of the most notorious date clashes have, ironically, been between rival German events! (This situation has, however, calmed down more recently).
Anyway, the good news for fans and organisers of the Essen event is that in 2027, Fetish Weekend London will not be taking place over Easter weekend but, instead, will occupy the long weekend (April 1-4) after Easter. So this should make it possible for FWL to welcome more German and Dutch pervs next year.
However, if FWL 2027 sticks to the basic programme format of this year’s debut, it will stage its 2027 fetish fair on Fri-Sat April 2-3. This means attendees — including any first-time visitors from Europe — will also have the chance to enjoy a third consecutive day’s shopping at LAM (assuming it take place on Sunday April 4 as expected). In other words: the two markets will again have the same close proximity as this year. Which, we suspect, might not please everyone.
Our selected London dates in May, and info/ticket links for them:
May 03: LAM – Farewell to Forge at Forge
May 10: The Sunday Slick – launch event at FYEO
May 12: LAM – Location, Location, Location – Outdoor Shoot for Adult Content Creators
May 22: Torture Garden – May Ball at The Steel Yard
May 23-25: LAM – Massive May Weekender at Eureka, Kent