Their stomachs aren't as flat as they used to be, and it takes them twice as long to push, pull and stretch themselves into an outfit. They aren't as limber as they used to be, either. "I have to lie on the bed to zip it up now!" Robert Hathaway laughs when he talks about putting on his leather suit. "The feet go in first, then I take a breather because I'm built like an inner tube around the middle," he says. "It was fun putting the first ones on when we were younger, but it's hell now!" His wife, Patty, says they've been thinking about buying matching masks, something that wasn't available to them years ago.
They'll never forget the day they came. Patty and Robert Hathaway had moved on up from mail-order. These suits were custom made. The leathers came from California to their small town in New Mexico, which they'd rather not name. "You know, we still know people there," Patty says. "We had to hide the box from the kids and wait until summertime when they all went to camp." Then they had one leather-filled week of fun.
It was 1954. Patty was 27, Robert was 30, and they loved to wear tight leather. Not out, of course, and definitely not when the children were home. "We didn't know anybody who wore leather and we struggled with our lifestyle and raising a family," Robert says. "We heard only crazy people did what we did, but we knew we were as normal as they come," Patty says. "We didn't know there was a word for it," she adds. The Hathaways had a fetish; they got more sexual gratification out of wearing leather.
When their daughter moved to San Francisco in 1969 and wrote back about Haight-Ashbury, they secretly waited for their youngest son to leave home, to move west. "We thought he'd never leave," Patty jokes.
Fetish. Any object or part of the body not sexual in nature that causes an erotic response or fixation. Some "feet" people like shiny high heels, some people like leather, still others are into rubber. Tomayto, tomahto.
With a reputation for free love and high fashion, San Francisco is the perfect place for people who prefer organic or inorganic clothing materials for sexual satisfaction. About fifteen years ago, fetish fashion meant leather, in San Francisco parlance, it was Leatherman. "Bob" was part of that movement. He is an investment banker who went to a club in 1978 where everyone was wearing leather. "It was like the second coming of Christ for me," he says. He's been wearing leather ever since, though his style has changed. "The pants, bare-chested, cap, thick-mustache look is out. Since I've gotten older, I only wear one or two pieces at a time."
Bob loves the feeling he gets knowing that no one in his conservative office knows of lifestyle. "When we're all standing around in the morning, I'm talking to these big wigs, and I have this fantasy of saying, 'I'm wearing tight leather underwear, you know,' Can you imagine?" he says.
Natural products may be the rage when it comes to food, but fetish fashion includes materials made in factories. Mark Obiyashi, an exchange student studying fashion, saw this trend happening years ago in Japan when fashion designers started tinkering with man-made materials.
"Where do you think designers get their ideas from?" he asks, referring to the fact that rubber and vinyl fetishes influenced designers, not the other way around. "Issey Miyake and Yammamoto started doing rubber clothes because fetishists had been wearing it for years," he says. "It's fabulous because it makes fetishes not so abnormal in society's eyes," Mark says. "People go into Macy's and see rubber clothes."
Lisa Doom is a budding dominatrix who only uses rubbers and vinyls while she works. "It's like vegan fetish, I guess," she says. Ms. Doom was turned-on to rubber during the punk scene. "With man-mades, it's not only the feel of the clothes, it's the smell, it's the shine, it's the overt sexuality of the clothes," she says. "It's like being naked with a thin sheath on. It makes every nerve on my body stand at attention," she says. Rubber does have its drawbacks.
Ms. Doom cannot get dressed by herself because she must be covered head-to-toe in baby powder before she can peel into her rubber clothes. "I buy powder in bulk," she says. Then she tells her assistant which part of the outfit she'd like to have shined. "It's time consuming and expensive because my look has to be perfect, that's the image my clients must have," she says.
Patty and Robert say helping each other get into their clothes is like foreplay. Especially Patty's $800, custom-made, leather corset. "Our fetish is part of our bond, and we're fortunate to live in a city where no one gawks when a 69 and 70-year-old couple comes into a store to buy a whip," she says. "They smile because we are free and happy enough to be able to express ourselves sexually. So many people want to wear leather or rubber or whatever, but are afraid," Patty says. "This is one town that embraces all sorts of people, that's why we came here," Robert says. "We knew people would accept us-whips and all."
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