Rise and shine: latex emerges as next season’s slickest, most salacious trend
Image: Ieva Piekut
This article was originally published for University of the Arts London
Rubber is rife – with its bodycon, skin-sculpting, elastic appeal – stretching across the catwalks and high street alike. There’s no sign of it shrinking.
Grey cobblestones awash with rainwater at Paris Fashion Week weren’t the only thing serving a wet look. As she made her way to husband Kanye’s Sunday Service, taking a break from the relentless show schedule, Kim Kardashian West squeaked along the French embankments wearing head-to-toe latex. In doing so, she slipped a smooth new style into everybody’s wishlist for AW20. That caramel-hued number, courtesy of Olivier Rousteing’s Balmain, did what rubber does best: it cinched, it clenched, it flattered. The material choice du jour could also be found on her viral 2014 Paper Magazine cover, as the star popped champagne in a slinky black gown that perfectly accentuated her S-curves.
High shine and higher impact, latex has recently veered into the costume department behind Lady Gaga’s new album, Chromatica. Its cover art depicts the singer in an airtight black bodysuit and for the just-released ‘Stupid Love’ music video, dancers revel in Pepto-pink rubbers. The same can be said for rappers Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj and also Halsey, who have favourably wiggled towards the style in recent weeks. Its skin-like texture permeated AW20 catwalks by way of Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vacarello slithered models into latex trousers but opted for diaphanous silky blouses and boxed blazers on the upper half. Likened to a sartorial mullet, the ensembles were business on top, party on bottom – black in particular being reminiscent of Sandy’s glossy leggings at the Grease fairground.
Elsewhere on the rubber radar, graduates are stretching the boundaries. At London College of Fashion, design alumni Harikrishnan reached viral status for his ballooning menswear trousers that culminated one part-circus clown, one part-genie harem pant. The sleek material has always inflated erotica, be it plastered on the body of 1994 Madonna or burrowed in the corner of a fetish nightclub. Latex is perennially kinky. Rogerio Alves, sales manager at latex couture house Libidex describes it as a, “sensual and erotic material, it’s like a second skin. It reveals the contours of the body, enhancing its curves, exaggerating one’s endowments or disguising the lack of it.”
This divulgence into fetish has been explored seasons over by London darling Richard Quinn, with his dainty floral dresses that sit oxymoronically upon black gimp suits. For AW20, his designs have been bolstered with garish bows yet the slick, jet underlayer gives each look a grown up touch. Since the show, Billy Porter and Kendall Jenner have both been adorned in his rose-meets-rubber creations for various outings, shifting latex to the streets while raising a few eyebrows in the process. It wouldn't be the first time the veneer has elicited a strong response; take the 1978 ‘Joe / Rubberman’ series by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, that exposed catsuits in their varnished, body-sculpting entirety. Glazed, sexy and akin to new season Quinn.
As proven, fashion is no stranger to darkness. It was only in the Moschino Pre-fall AW18 show that Jeremy Scott submitted an entire collection to bondage. Two seasons later, in AW19, Christopher Kane picked up the latex stick with a collection dedicated to kink driven “rubberists”. Complete with wrist-gripper gloves and explicit graphic prints, then Marine Serre again dredged up the gimp suit – popularised originally in Pulp Fiction – that same month. Marc Jacobs has previously plunged to the sultry depths, so too has Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen. “Latex taps into the idea of underground sexy, youth culture. It also lends itself well to ’show’ clothing as it is usually shiny, and somehow quite futuristic looking... it grips the body,” adds renowned latex designer, William Wilde.
Fast-forward to the present day and latex feels ever so restrictive, a familiar sense amid Covid-19. It seems coincidental that Britney Spears’ ‘Oops I Did it Again’ music video turns twenty this year, within it, her iconic latex catsuit in blood-red. Balenciaga AW20 picked up this same shade for its apocalyptic collection. Wading through oily waters, bypassing a submerged front row, models wore latex in sinister colourways. This dark approach was also adopted by Thierry Mugler and Kwaidan Editions through reflective navy button-ups and ebony A-lined dresses. All subtly erotic.
“To start with, latex clothing was very stigmatised and mainly used in the BDSM industry, it could only be bought by catalogue or at seedy shops in less-than-salubrious locations,” Alves continues. From this starting point, the material gained traction in the power-dominated eighties – giving lycra a lustful run for its money – and beyond. “It was an organic evolution.”
An evolution indeed. Rubber has traversed from battle trenches to rain-macs and into a more feminine sphere, it maintains a “synonymy with sensuality,” adds celebrity stylist, Sophie Stewart. There is a self-assuredness to wearing the soft material, even more so in pale shades. Next season Sally LaPointe demonstrates this with a skin-seeping slip dress in a cool nude – not so far from Beyonce’s pearl and blossom appliqued Atsuko Kudo number for the 2016 Met Gala.
Despite its attraction, Wilde warns of, “the practical limitations [that] will always keep latex from being properly mainstream, it perishes easily if not cared for correctly, can’t be machine washed, and fades in sunlight.” Alas, readers, one can still retrieve their latex fix from PVC and pleather, or look to Stella McCartney for durable boots made from the same texture – tight-fitting and also pleasingly vegan. Taking hints from Versace, why not seek a vinyl LBD number for date night? A timeless and tangible way to spotlight the female body that’s just as irresistible to touch – a bonus, most certainly. Leather jackets and trousers lend themselves well as practical latex alternatives, for those more casual appointments.
Above all, it’s clear the appeal of latex is likely to bound back and forth like an elastic band, but this time around be sure to try it on for size. Embrace your inner Catwoman prowess – it's time to snap sexy back.