Tag: Photograph

Mistress Antoinette

I’m going to close this series of vintage themed posts by returning to the first one in it. Several readers reached out via comments and emails to say that the domme in the photograph was a Mistress Antoinette. I’d not been aware of her until now, but by all accounts she was an amazing person.

This Rialto Report article provides some interesting background, with tributes from the likes of Dita Von Teese and Annie Sprinkle. Among her many accomplishments was publishing the fetish and femdom Reflections Magazine and creating the fashion company Versatile Fashions. You can hear from Mistress Antoinette as well as see some of her creations in this 1997 video of the Dressed To Thrill Ball.

One reader was kind enough to send me a lovely story of his interaction with her back in the 80’s. I’m sharing it below with his permission.

Way back In 1983, while driving back to San Diego after a few days of climbing in Yosemite National Park, I visited her fetish clothing store, Versatile Fashions Boutique. To my delight she was in the store that day, and was very kind when I told her that I was a longtime fan who loved being submissive to women. She had a reporter coming in for an interview, and for his benefit I was allowed to play her slave, footstool, bootlicker, and errandboy while she chatted merrily and casually with the reporter. It was a wonderful experience for me, exercising my macho rock climber persona on one day, and my worshipful slave persona the next. Plus she was just such a decent person with a big heart and a wonderful sense of humor.

She’s now retired and, based on this article, is sadly suffering from some health problems. She was clearly a kinky pioneer with a great personality. I’m sure we all wish her well in retirement.

Although Ms Antoinette has retired, the fashion company continues today under the brand Versatile Corsets.

Jutka and Jamie

I always enjoy posting and gently poking fun at the fashions and tropes of vintage fetish shots. However, I should make clear that I’ve the utmost respect for the people who created them. They were operating at great legal risk, with very limited funds and no easy way to distribute their material. They had no blueprint for what BDSM material should look like and no easy way to get customer feedback. Sex workers today complain – with total justification – about the limits credit card companies and social media impose. Yet the idea of being able to simply snap and tweet an image would blow the mind of a 60’s fetish photographer. They had to deal with printing physical magazines, postal inspectors keen to sieze their material, paper mailing lists of nervous customers and the mob money that funded a lot of pornography.

If, like me, you love reading stories about the early days of kinky porn, then I’d highly recommend this Rialto article on Leonard Burtman and his wife/model Jutka Goz (aka Jennifer Jordan).  Using a photograph of Jutka dominating Jamie Gillis as jumping off point, it tells the story of Leonard Burtman, one of the pioneers of kink and femdom porn. Along the way it touches on such famous names as Weegee, Bettie Page, Irving Klaw, Rene Bond and of course Jamie Gillis. I found it fascinating and touching. I particularly loved the 2018 interview with Jutka, who seems like she’s living her best life in Beverly Hills.

These two images are of Jutka and Jamie Gillis, both taken from the Rialto article. For anyone wondering if she was really dominant, I’m afraid the answer is no.

Jutka remembers the modeling work as entertaining and enjoyable: “It was fun to get dressed up and be outrageous,” she says. As for whether she had a personal interest in spanking, leather, or domination, she laughs: “It was only a role. I’m a good bullshit artist.”

My thanks to DrewP for point me to the article via a comment.

Vintage Pegging

I’m continuing my theme of vintage femdom imagery with another unusual image. This time it’s not the outfits or setting which are odd – they look pretty standard for 70’s kinky porn – but the activity. Whips, leather outfits and bad bondage are common in vintage shots, but you almost never find pegging scenes like this one. Until the last decade or so it was very risky in the US to combine sex with BDSM in pornography and anal penetration fell under that categorization. I’d therefore guess that this is from a European publication. Of course they wouldn’t have called it pegging at the time – that term wasn’t coined until Dan Savage came along in 2001.

Updated: Bacchus of ErosBlog added an amazing comment with some detailed research on this image. It looks like it came from Candy Films, a forerunner of Color Climax Corporation. Almost certainly it was published in the early 70’s, and probably in a magazine called Man Servant.

Equally Strange

Odd and unsuitable outfits for dommes are nothing new in femdom porn. Her leather outfit and big gloves aren’t what most people would pick for a sunny afternoon on a patio, but I’ve seen stranger. What’s unusual here is his metallic looking corset. That looks very uncomfortable and not in a sexy way. It’s a very weird combination of outfits and setting. At least she gave him a shaggy rug to kneel on.

I’ve no idea where this is from. From the style I’d guess it was shot in the early 70’s.

Cocktail Hour

One thing I’ve missed this year is making cocktails for friends. That’s such a pleasurable activity. Making a cocktail is much quicker and simpler than cooking a meal, yet still has those elements of handcrafting and artistry that makes it fun to do. There are endless recipes to try and minimal knife skills required. Plus, you end up with drunk happy grateful friends.

This image is obviously from the Play Girl magazine and features Alex Hawn as the man with the Martini glass. The first version I found of this image had been weirdly edited to chop his head off and photoshop out the gun from her hand. I kind of get the cropping to remove the logo and make the woman more center frame. That’s a pretty common tumblr type edit. But who simultaneously hated guns yet loved this image so much that they spent the time to photoshop the gun out?

Twinkle Toes

Just after writing my previous post on the subject of kink and shame, I stumbled across this Savage Love column. I think the first letter there is a good grounding point for those of us who spend a lot of time on BDSM sites and following like minded people on social media. It’s easy to get blase about kinks and forget that for a lot of people they can come as a shock.

The letter in question features a guy whose boyfriend is into feet and has a thing for painting toe nails. As kinks go, I can’t really think of a more harmless one. A foot fetish is very common and painting a partners toenails seems kind of cute whatever the gender combination. Yet the letter writer – someone who regularly read Savage Love and claimed to be GGG – seemed weirdly freaked by the idea. I think Dan nails the answer, but the fact the writer felt the need to pose the question is a good data point in itself.

When it comes to foot lovers, Quentin Tarantino is an obvious go to. This is him in a publicity shoot with Diane Kruger for his movie Inglorious Bastards. It was shot for the NY Time Magazine.

The Chicago Studio

I’ve previously covered the difficulties playspaces are having right now with Covid-19. The latest example to reach out for help is The Chicago Studio owned by Mistress Simone. They’ve set up a GoFundMe to help it survive here.

I’ve unfortunately never played with Mistress Simone, but I have been lucky enough to use that space multiple times with Mistress Mara Mayhem. It’s a great space with some excellent equipment. I particularly like this padded table with its sturdy metal frame and a cut out section. That combination allows for all sorts of fun bondage set-ups while leaving the body of the submissive very much available for tease or torture.

If you can afford to make a donation, then I’m sure all the Mistresses who use the space would very much appreciate it. I personally just donated. I’m very much looking forward to playing more when the virus is finally under control, and it’ll be very depressing if there’s nowhere left to do so by then.

This is Mistress Simone in a photograph from her web site.

Valerie Leon

I’m moving on from C S Lewis, but sticking with kinky button pushing moments from childhood. This image is Valerie Leon with Peter Sellers from the movie ‘Revenge of the Pink Panther‘.

The original scene – viewable on youtube here – now comes across as horribly dated. It leans into all sorts of uncomfortable stereotypes. However, back when I first saw it in the mid 80’s, it was my first awareness of the dominatrix role. There were plenty of screen characters who’d pushed my buttons already (like Catwoman and Miss Peel), but nothing as sexually overt as Valerie Leon’s role here. For all its cliches, it helped me connect some of the dots around sex and kink. This whip wielding dominatrix might be played for laughs, but the fact that type of character actually existed was a big part of putting together my kinky puzzle.

The White Witch

Most kinky people can point to moments in their youth where they had a sudden awareness of their kinky side. It can be almost anything – a scene on TV, a particular outfit, a movie character – but whatever it is, their kinky wiring goes ‘Bzzzzz!’ They might not even understand exactly what is happening or why, but there’s a sudden rush of both excitement and curiosity.

My favorite version of these are the really early ones. The ones that triggered me even though I was too young to know about sex or kink. Where I remember a strange attraction to something, but it’s only obvious in hindsight why. The existence of these events before I reached adolescence speak to the very deep and intrinsic nature of my kinks.

I discovered a new one recently. A tweet mentioned the White Witch of Narnia, from the books by C. S. Lewis, and suddenly a penny dropped. I think I was around 9 or 10 when I read them and I remember being fascinated by the White Witch. Particularly the scenes where she seduces Edmund with warm furs and Turkish delight. There was also her habit of turning disobedient creatures into statues. In hindsight the idea of a cruel, powerful and sensual woman with a taste for objectification and fornophilia would be an obvious draw for a young paltego. It’s just taken me a few decades to realize why.

This is Tilda Swinton in the role as Jadis the White Witch, from the 2005 movie.

Hustle (updated)

Last month I wrote a post where I expressed surprise that sex workers hadn’t jumped on the idea of selling masks made from their intimate apparel. Given a lot of pro-dommes sell used panties and socks online already, why not turn them into masks and also plug into kinks around exhibitionism and subtle public play?

It turns out that at least one domme was already plotting in that direction. Madeline Marlowe recently put up this tweet with the fact she’s sold 48 pairs of well scented pantie masks. That fact does not surprise me at all. Round 2 of production is apparently opening up, so check out the instructions in her tweet if you’d like one of her unique masks.

This image is another shot from Madeline’s twitter feed. It features her with Will Havoc in a docu-series called ‘Chastity’. You can see more from it via her Only Fans.