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[title]‘When I started here in 2005, it was a long way from what it is now,’ explains Stef Dickers, Special Collections and Archives Manager at the endlessly intriguing Bishopsgate Institute. ‘Now, we’ve got people coming in literally every day with stuff. We’ve already had one call today, saying ‘‘I’ve got all these naughty magazines – do you want them?’’ You know I do!’
This Spitalfields space has been open to the public since 1894, dedicated to London history, specifically around the ideas of free-thought, protest and social change. It’s already a pretty right-on place, but Dickers has broadened the Institute’s remit even further, covering wider-reaching aspects of the human experience related to groups seen as more fringe and subcultural. Step forward then, the UK Leather and Fetish Archive. The first of its kind anywhere in the world, you’ll find it behind a ‘not suitable for under 18s’ sign at the back of a grand Art Nouveau building just opposite Liverpool Street station. ‘I call it democratisation – a community that’s not been able to record itself, can now record itself,’ explains Dickers.
There was nowhere looking at alternative sexualities the way we do
Boasting a relentlessly horny array of donations from members of the public, it’s an eye-popping collection which spans thousands of pieces of fetish-related ephemera, from specialist magazines to knee-high boots retrieved from London leather bar The Backstreet, latex dresses from deceased dominatrixes and the original spanking bench from Torture Garden. The V&A it is not.
Open every weekday to inquiring minds, the archive also shares its collection of fabulous filth via Instagram, a platform from which they have ‘been banned three times’, says Dickers with equal amounts pride and annoyance. But as with all these things, it’s much more of a revelation in the flesh. Stef took Time Out on a tour of one of London’s most eye-opening days out.
How did the fetish archive start?
Stef: ‘In 2016, I got a call from a guy in Birmingham who said ‘‘I was heavily involved in a rubber leather fetish club for gay and bisexual gentlemen, and I’m downsizing and need somewhere to put all this stuff.’’ I sent a van up to collect it and thought it was going to be very racy but it was one of the most administrative archives I’ve ever seen. It was lots of subcommittee minutes and documents from a group called Midland Link Motor Sports Club. That was the first to come in and it started a flood. Initially it was very much a gay and bisexual and predominantly cis male archive of the Tom of Finland sort. There were lots of clubs; MSC London, Manchester Super Chain, East Anglia Bikers, Sussex Lancers, Essex Leather. We have their flyers, artwork, magazines, badges and patches. Then we’d get bits of gear as well, like jackets, and that sort of expanded it out and we got a few bits from Dykes on Bikes and SM Dykes – and I was like, oh let’s let everyone in!’
What was one of the first fetish collections you received?
‘It was from Miss Kim who ran a night called Club Rub, which is one the longest running fetish nights in London. She did these amazing flyers every week, all done by photographers who were famous or went on to be famous. She was like ‘‘You need me, I’m amazing – you need to put me in the archive!’’ We had three more dominatrixes after that, and some amazing stuff about Skin Two and the Skin Two Rubber Balls from Mistress Absolute, alongside her own archive. Then magazines galore started to come in, and a bookseller donated some 1960s bondage illustrations by an artist called Mory. We also have Mistress Demonic’s latex. It’s all wrapped up because rubber tends to degrade. Sadly she’s passed now, but this was her signature outfit.’
How can people actually visit the archive and see what’s in it?
‘Let’s be honest, archives are a bit scary, but you can walk in anytime you want, you don’t have to bring ID. We’re trying to make it a bit of a safe space – we’re also home to many LGBTQIA+ archives, and put some flags up during Pride. They’ve been there ever since and never came down.’
So it’s not all paper and print…
‘We’ve got the original spanking bench from Torture Garden. Someone had it in their shed. There’s also the cage from the Backstreet leather bar – I’m not sure you could fit an actual human in it. When they closed in 2022, they said, ‘‘Stef, you’ve got this morning to clear out whatever you can’’. They had so many pairs of boots. We took two. We also digitise a lot of VHS tapes.’
How much latex have you got here?
‘Once the Instagram account started we began to get messages from America, including a group called Centurion, who are the oldest fetish company in the world. Five pallets came from Reno, Nevada, with gear, magazines and artwork galore. They would sell via mail order and some of the items have so many straps we’re not quite sure where they go, but we worked it out.’
What other contemporary items have been donated?
‘The archive is a mixture of heritage and a record of the kink scene now. We have digital material and photographs of the clubs around today, like Klub Verboten. You wonder how much has already been lost. If we’d have started this 25 years ago we would have got infinitely more [from] people whose uncles had a house full of rubber, or whose mums and dads turned out to be kinky but they just destroyed the lot. We’ve got the archive of an amazing woman called Alice Purnell and there’s a letter in there from someone who knew a pilot who did every mission wearing women’s underwear under his suit. He came out of the army and lived the rest of his life as a woman, but the family were so disgusted by their father’s behaviour they destroyed everything when he died.’
You have quite a lot of magazines…
‘We have literally every kink magazine you’ve ever wanted in your life. What do you fancy? One of my favourite ones is London Life. It’s quite rare. It was [about] how fetishists would communicate with each other in the 1930s and 1940s. It would feature pictures of starlets of the day, but was also one of the first magazines to talk about piercing and tattooing. The correspondence columns in particular are a bit suggestive, talking about rubber booties and garters versus suspenders.’
How far back do the fetish artefacts go?
‘We have some stuff from the turn of the century, but it’s mainly the 1930s – any earlier is just so hard to find. There are some really classic bits from the 1960s. There was a real big thing for the Mackintosh [raincoat] around the time of The Avengers, and we have a run of magazines from the 1960s called Impermeable Delcatable full of ladies very twee-ly wearing rubber macs. They’re quite amazing because you can see how cheaply they were produced, with the photographs printed off in large stock, so that when Soho sex shops were raided by the police you could just get all the text again, slot the photos in and be back on sale. We’ve also recently just accepted the largest collection of 8mm hardcore pornography that was illegal between 1960 and 1980 from fantastic academic Professor Oliver Carter. It’s called things like Kinky Vicar and Naughty Nurse – that was also sold in Soho. We also have 20 books of scrapbooks of rubber fetishism that belonged to a leading member of the Tory party.’
What kind of people come and visit?
‘You would not believe the range of people. They come from all over the world. We get fashion students, art students and academics writing very serious academic papers on latex. We also get people who used to be on the scene, who come to look themselves up and see how gorgeous they were. And someone came in the other day, whose mum was a model – she didn’t do any naughty shoots, just shiny stuff – and they found her in the Rainwear Review.’
What are your plans for the archive in the future?
‘I’d love to do a big exhibition. But the real aim was to get this established, because I was aware that there was nowhere which was looking at alternative sexualities, and most importantly, looking at them in the way which we do, which is celebratory. Other places have stuff about kinky people, but it’s looked at as a psychosexual disorder. I want it to be a celebration of amazing communities that have done amazing things and provided people with a lot of fun.’
The UK Leather and Fetish Archive is at the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH.