Unconventional ventilation

The leather pants that I wear in the show, I’ve gone through three pairs of them already. Leather pants, in the summertime, they get a little clingy. Sometimes they’re clinging when they should be moving. The first invited dress rehearsal, by the end of Act 1, I’d completely ripped the crotch open. And so the end of the act, it’s me fucking bellowing and freaking out, yet I’m feeling a cool breeze coming up my crotch.

Michael Blake, who plays the title role in Othello at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival

The choice is a message

An acquaintance of mine sometimes publicly wears an impressive leather outfit with a muir cap and all. It is obvious to everybody who sees him that leather is a fetish for him. On the other hand, fetishism is a big secret for some men. Some cannot even imagine trying to buy a pair of black leather gloves.

I guess most leather fetishists lie between these two extremes. Many do not want to be obvious fetishists but want to hint at their interests to persons who are able to recognize the hints. Straitjacketed writes:

My theory is that many people register a (conscious or unconscious) attraction to certain fabrics and types of garment, and wearing a certain item is like projecting a signal on a semi-hidden wavelength.

It is once again the time of the year when motorcyclists begin to populate the roads of Finland. More often than before I find myself pondering whether a leather-wearing motorcyclist is trying to hint at his fetishistic interest in leather. Modern non-leather riding gear with all the technical innovations (Gore-Tex, Kevlar et cetera) is very practical. Choosing leather gear is no longer the obvious default choice it may have been in the past.

Lionel Richie collected leather trousers

I was a leather trousers collector for years. If I was 25 again, I’d be wearing them, but I’d probably get arrested right outside my hotel. Anyway, I would probably only be able to get one leg into them now. 

Lionel Richie, the 59-year-old R & B singer

Tom Wisdom misses the leather trousers

Tom Wisdom wears leather trousers in the film “The Boat That Rocked“. He plays Midnight Mark, a disc jockey of a pirate radio station in 1966.

When asked whet he enjoyed most about working on the film, Tom replied:

The leather trousers…I miss them.

Tom also did not mind that he had few lines to say:

As Mark hardly speaks, I miss just sitting there, smoking and being entertained by everyone. I have never said so little but laughed so much!

In the future, Tom would like to play a bad guy:

I would love to play a down and dirty rock star! Along the lines of Midnight Mark but with all the bad stuff thrown in! Something darker than I have done before but still with the leather trousers. I also loved the physical aspect of “300” and would love to do more fighting. I thoroughly enjoyed killing people.

A flirting aeroplane

You look cute in leather.

A display in a JetBlue Airways aeroplane.

You look cute in leather.
Enjoy your comfy leather seat.

The same display a moment later.

How Jim Morrison got his leather pants

Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist of The Doors, reminisced in a recent radio show how he helped Jim Morrison get leather pants. Ray recalled how Jim brought the subject up.

– I wanna wear leather pants.
– Why, man?
– Like Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind.
– Oh, I got you, like Marlon Brando snake-skin jacket?
– Exactly, man. I cannot afford a snake-skin jacket, but we can afford a pair of leather pants.
– Okay.
– Where can I get ‘em?
– God, you know, at a cowboy store? I don’t know where you get leather pants, Jim, but let me look around.

There was a leather shop in Beverly Hills, on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, kept by an old tailor from Germany. Ray went into the shop.

– Can you make leather pants?
– But of course I can make leather pants. That’s what I do here.
– Show me some leather.
– This is glove leather. Look at this, this is kid glove leather.

Ray felt the leather. It was the softest leather he had ever felt. In a little while, Ray returned to the shop with Jim.

– Feel this leather, man. Bring out that kid glove leather. Jim, look at this, man.
– This is perfect, this is it, man. This is soft, that’s what I want.
– I thought you wanted something like stiff kind of leather, like cow…
– I don’t want cow hide, man, I want this kid glove leather, that’s what I want.

Ray asked the tailor whether he could make a pair of pants out of the leather. The tailor was skeptical.

– That is for gloves! You do not make pants, why do you think it’s called glove leather? It’s kid glove leather. That’s for gloves. You cannot make pants out of it.

Jim insisted and the tailor agreed.

– Can’t you make me a pair of pants?
– Well, you know, I can. I’ve never done it… I can do it. I can work anything in leather. Let me take your measurements.

The tailor was in for another surprise.

– What kind of a cut do you like? You like this with a double pleat and do you like a lot of room and…
– No, no, no. Cut them like jeans. Cut my pants like Levi’s.
– What?! You want this finest leather cut like Levi’s? Like cowboy pants? What is the matter with you?
– That’s what I want.
– All right, I will do it. Come back in two weeks.

The tailor took Jim’s measurements and sure enough, in two weeks the leather pants were ready. Ray remembers being impressed.

– They were super. They just fit. They were like snake skin. He looked like a snake, man. He looked like a black mamba. He put on those leather pants and from the waist down he had turned into a black mamba. That was the beginning of the reign of Jim Morrison the sex symbol, Jim Morrison the sex idol, on stage, when he became the black mamba. That was it, man, it was all over. All the women who saw him just absolutely fell in love.

The members of The Doors did not dress uniformly.

– I would wear suits and sport coats and, you know, try to shave and keep my hair combed. Jim’s wearing black leather and poet’s shirts and John and Robbie are flower children. Basically, that’s Los Angeles. That’s the blend and the brew of Los Angeles, you know. You’ve got the Wild West as the lead singer up front, the shaman, the black mamba, the snake man upfront, the lizard king as a lead singer. You’ve got a couple of local boys who are meditators and flower children. And then you’ve got the guy from the New York brownstones, influenced by beatnicks and The Evergreen Review and the jazzers.

Ray thinks the diversity was typical for the psychedelic era.

– The whole thing was to be yourself and do your own thing. You did your own thing and nobody got in your space and you didn’t get into anybody else’s space. I guess that’s why people were able to get along. That’s why this whole idea of peace and love and brotherhood and harmony all happened. You were allowed to do your “own thing”. I wouldn’t judge you, you wouldn’t judge me. I’m not gonna judge what you wear.

Leather sleeves

I was at a party the other night, and I saw a guy wearing a leather jacket, and I thought “that is cool”. Like ten minutes later, I saw a guy wearing a leather vest and I thought “that is not cool”. That’s when I realized cool is all about leather sleeves.

Comedian Demetri Martin

A sure sign

I look great in the cowboy hat. I think I was fantastic in the leather pants in the space scene. I really look good in the gladiator costume. I’m just guessing I look good from the two reactions. Keri Russell would always go, “Oh, my God!” And, Shankman would always go, “Oh, my God!”

Actor Adam Sandler in an interview about the movie “Bedtime Stories“. Actor Keri Russell played opposite to Sandler and openly gay Adam Shankman directed the movie.

Hungarian stubbornness

Csaba Vastag, a singer in the Hungarian television show Popdaráló, does not like to be told what to wear. The show’s stylist Anita Danube is always in big trouble when the clothes for Csaba should be chosen: the singer doesn’t want to give up his leather pants. Csaba told the newspaper Blikk:

It is important for me to be comfortable in the clothes I wear for a whole day of shooting. There’s nothing more comfortable than leather pants. Besides, leather pants express my personality the most. Anita sometimes tries to give me trousers with well-pressed creases, but I always find some excuse for not wearing them.

Csaba’s passion for leather started when he was 15. He has become a fanatical collector: he has leather in almost every color of the palette.

(Thank you, Mart, for translating the article!)

The eleventh commandment

Ages ago, Kris was given a pair of leather trousers. “You wear leather trousers don’t you? I have some I bought and hardly wore, you can have them.” Unfortunately, Kris could not wear those leather trousers because they were far too small for him.

Kris mentioned his workmate Simon about the trousers. Simon jumped at the chance: “I’ll have them.”

Kris brought the leather trousers to Simon. Simon put the leather trousers on and seemed to like them. In fact, Simon spent a good ten minutes stroking his leathery thighs. Kris found it funny. Kris took photographs of Simon with a camera phone and uploaded the photos to Flickr.

Kris had taken the photos in a church. An acquaintance of Kris saw the leather photos in Flickr and frowned upon them, claiming that one should not wear leather in a church. The boys’ reaction? They both put leather trousers on, went to the church, took a photograph of themselves and uploaded the photo to Flickr.

Hats off to Kris and Simon!