ABSTRACT
Fashion is the culturally dominant mode of dress expressing, as a rule, the dominance of a social class. The ‘kaleidoscope of fashion’ represents one of the most spectacular arenas of this struggle. In the nineteenth century comparisons were always being drawn between European tight-lacing and Chinese foot-binding. The differences between the truly cultural fashion of the Chinese and the controversial minority fashion-fetish of the West are revealing. Bondage devices in leather unite pleasures on two levels – the associative atavistic one of the animal skin, and the immediate sculptural one. ‘Scientific’ study, as well as the law, has focused on the pathological and criminological manifestations of fetishism, impaired social tolerance of private and harmless fetishist behaviour, and sought to repress or erase it. The physically idle upper classes can afford to keep them small and confined, preserving them as symbols of sexual refinement and social leisure.
