Portfolio at NYU

Valerie Steele, Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power (Oxford, 1996)
Reissued by Oxford in paperback in August 1997

"What is 'normal' erotic fantasy?"

Valerie Steele asks this semi-disturbing question at the end of her trend-exploring novel Fetish. This cultural historian examined the evolution of mainstream fashion as it incorporated and thus legitimized clothing fetishes from the early 19th century to the onset of the new millennium. Through the thinly veiled pretense of discussing seams and stitches of corsets, high-heeled shoes and underwear, Steele creates a discourse about the perversity of males in modern society and why it is so taboo to have a fetish.

"Over the last 30 years, fashion designers and trendy dressers have stolen from the fetishist's closet -- ultra-high heels, corsets, pointy bras, rubber mackintoshes, frilly underwear, leather gear, latex cat suits, body rings and tattoos," said Sarah Boxer in a Jan. 14 1996, book review for the New York Times. "The appropriation has been so masterly that there are people running around in leather corsets who don't even know the fetishistic roots of their fashion. And there are fetishists running around fretting that their magical objects are losing their power."

Although body parts are more likely to become objects of a sexual fetish than clothing, various costumes have surfaced throughout history as representatives of untraditional sexuality. In the 1800s, corsets and pumped-up cleavage served as a form of rebellion against the repressive rules of the church. In the early 1900s, psychologist Sigmund Freud said that men embrace fetishism because they associate a certain clothing item with a phallic symbol. By the 1960s, fetishism had moved out of the bedroom and onto the runway. Vivienne Westwood, a clothing designer known for her punk creations, pushed the boundaries of fashion photography with a series of ads in Vogue featuring models in rubber outfits acting out bondage fantasies and thus made it socially acceptable to bring clothes usually regarded as having a sexual purpose into stores.

Most people are more comfortable pointing the finger at "the other" as being the weirdo or pervert, without owning up to any subversive thoughts of their own. Psychologists explain fetishism as a way to deal with some sexual hang-up. Feminists are split on the idea of clothing that represents S&M, with half of the camp furious at the idea of clothing that objectifies women to purely a subservient, sexual object and the other half praising costumes like the dominatrix because they allow women to bend gender roles. But regardless of the gag order among mainstream America that forbids discussion of fetishes as an everyday occurrence, Steele points out that it has a grip on the fashion world and hopes that fabric will bridge the gap between what society considers "natural" and "perverse" sexuality.

Although the book was well received - on a somewhat limited scale - by most critics for its detailed historical analysis of fetish, some blasted Steele's distant objectivity from an easily penetrable culture as a misstep in her reporting tactics. Steele is a cultural historian specializing in fashion who teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology, "and, alas, not a reporter," Shannon Holcomb wrote in a review for GenderWatch. "There is a story here, but she missed it. Carefully, Steele remained a Nice Girl, different from all those Thems she and the tired old shrinks she trotted out for her 'research' point their fingers at."

"Ms. Steele has assembled a lot of evidence to show that fashion designers have lately adopted the fetishist's wardrobe," Boxer wrote in her New York Times review. "What she does not probe as deeply are the many things that fashion and fetishism have always shared. Hasn't fashion always wrapped fantasy in fabric? (Even Ralph Lauren couldn't deny it.) Hasn't fashion always turned sexuality toward the inanimate object?"

MORE:
The Corset: A Cultural History
Books by Valerie Steele