Latex leggings have taken high fashion by storm.  Celebrities, models, wannabe starlets, and even these days the common city girl can be seen with a pair.  In the conservative city of Washington D.C. I saw a girl in Georgetown bopping down the sidewalk in a pair of shiny latex - or what I thought was latex, as I didn't get a good look - leggings.

So my next question is- will mainstream fashion, with it's eye toward avante garde and edginess, next move toward latex formal wear?  Will we see couture evening gowns from latex and other fetish fabrics, make it's way down the catwalk and eventually down our city streets? 

In ten years will I be going to work and seeing the poshest ladies decked out in formal attire made from vinyl, pvc, or latex?  While I doubt that the workplace will ever become an acceptable forum for latex fashions, I do suspect that formalwear will one day pick up on the trend.  And if it does, what will happen to the independent shops producing latex fashions?  Will they become house names and rise to the likes of GAP and JCREW?  Or will they have to differentiate themselves to their customers and stay a niche?  Could mainstream fashion put fetish retailers out of business?

As fickle as fashion is, I suspect that mainstream adoption of fetish fashions would have little effect on the indie fetish latels.  If anything it would probably help business as mainstream shoppers found their way into the indie businesses, seeking to buy and wear something that their friends don't have. 

Art is subjective, it is open to interpretation.  Everyone has ideas as to what constitutes a good image, painting, drawing.  In regards to creating erotic images of latex and pvc, I think that less is more.  

Sometimes I prefer an amaturish image, which conveys a feeling of "realness", versus the completely photoshoped and perfected image where a professional model was used, her flaws cleansed with hours of editing, and the lighting coming from artificial strobes.

I particularly liked the series below with the latex stockings and latex garter, because of what it lacks.  The imagination is left to run wild, and figure out what was going on.  What the person looked like, what they were doing or getting ready to do.  Was it a professional model and photographer or someone less skilled snapping pics of a friend or lover.

American Apparel is an edgy company whose website features images of young people in amaturish pictures, often pushing the envelope of what almost feels like softcore images.  Do these types of images help sell a product, or would professional, defect-free images sell a product better?

I did a few searches on the web for some cosplay events on the East Coast and came up with these:

http://www.katsucon.com/

Katsucon is held in Washington D.C. in February at the Omni Shoreham Hotel which is located at 2500 Calvert St NW, Washington, DC 20008.  Looks like you'll have to wait until next year for that one 

http://www.setsucon.com/

Setsucon is held at Day's Inn in State College, PA from January 26th to the 27th.  Looks like I'm doing so hot at finding any that you might be able to attend in '08. 

Comic-Con will be held in Baltimore on September 27th and 28th.  Honestly, I'm not 100% sure that people dress up to attend, but I think that they do.  You can check out more info directly here:

http://www.comicon.com/baltimore/index.htm

Here are some more great pics of latex and pvc Cosplay attendants:

Yesterday I was discussing with my GF how to better increase sales, and we were talking about different marketing ideas.  Over the last year I've implemented a lot of different things to try and increase traffic - such as these blogs, the product storylines, and setting up a flickr account, and a myspace account.

However, I hadn't really been looking at whether these things had any effect, but when I checked it out the other day, traffic had gone from 17,000 hits in January of 2007 to 170,000 hits in January 2008. 

Let's be honest, who can resist cool ass images (no pun intended) like the one here.  With new content being added weekly, and more fetish latex  and vinyl images and products being shot and produced in house, how could one stay away?

To further increase sales, later this year we will be adding erotic story's dealing with your favorite subjects: latex, pvc, vinyl, leather, domination, and kinkiness in general.  These articles will be available for download as PDF's for reading you can take with you, as well as available on our site.  The story's will be similar to the product storylines, but much longer and more indepth. 

We do a lot of shooting for the products that get posted.  Some of them are in a studio, although currently more of them have been on location.  Unfortunately, we only use 3-4 of the best photos on our product pages.

I have been toying with the idea of creating a gallery page with postings of some of the other pictures that didn't make it into the product pages.  In the long term, we are planning on releasing a magazine / catalog full of alternative fashions, pictures from us and other photographers and artists, music and club reviews, philosophy, and anything else alternative.

For now I plan on posting pics via the blog.  Check out some of my favorite photos of our fetish latex dresses and vinyl skirts below:

Today I had a photoshoot with the lovely and talented Nicotine.  Her modeling is really starting to gain steam, as she is becoming more and more sought after by photographers and creative collaborators.

Nicotine is extremely natural in front of the camera, and she's a self-described misfit off camera :)  Definitely a lover of all things alternative, and a pleasure to work with.

The shots we took were fairly conservative, as we were out at a local strip mall, and shooting midday on a Monday.  Nothing too crazy, and we branded the shoot as the "LL Bean" of fetish.  It seems to me like there is a current trend leaning towards latex fashions that are wearable out and about.

Look to have some images in my next posting - latex pants and a black sweater top mixed amongst Christmas decorations and fall leaves.