A look at the past shows which fashion-inspirations borrowed from history still influence our leather fetishism today. One of the tasks of fashion has always been the art and desire to please, to attract and to seduce with special emphasis on all charms. At a drag ball in Graz I was dressed in tails and top hat in the style of the late 19th century combined with leather chaps and a leather corset. In preparation for the moderation of the Fetish Baroque concert in Cologne, I focused on the Baroque clothing style and found a connection between fetishism and that cultural era.
The first clothing of the Stone Age consisted of animal skins. This was the time when fashion as we know it today began. Clothing was no longer just protection against the rigors of the weather, but for the first time had different colors, shapes and patterns and was combined with hats, belts and buttons. The protective clothing of the professional fighters known as gladiators in ancient Rome between 264 BC to the 5th century AD consisted mainly of leather. In the arena, they wore leather straps across their chest, which can be seen as a previous model for our harness today.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the codpiece became fashionable among men. It developed from the bib of the tight men’s trousers that were emerging at the time and allowed the necessary freedom of movement. The codpiece became more and more conspicuous over time due to their different shapes, padding and colors. This fashion trend represented a direct sexual allusion as it enabled men to publicly display their erotic charm and symbolized potency and sexual readiness. Even today we find leather jeans with detachable codpieces attached to the crotch or flaps emphasized by quilting and cuts. Leather jockstraps are also based on the codpiece of the past.
Around 1620, riding boots with a knee-high shaft and often with spurs became fashionable. They secured the ascent and hold on the horse and protected against storms and dirt. As early as the middle of the 17th century, however, high boots were banned from court fashion and only tolerated for hunting and for the military. In the following decades, fashion was subject to constant change. In the early 19th century, the dandy appeared for the first time, which was elegant without attracting attention. He wore bespoke clothes made of the finest fabrics with immaculate accessories such as a scarf or cotton wool. The cuts of men’s fashion at the time were tight and figure-hugging, which gave the impression of being naked. The vests were short, and the jackets cut out at the front to give an unobstructed view of the crotch.
Leather and fetish are often directly related to uniforms where the Sam Browne belt is used as an accessory. This is a wide, leather waist belt from which a narrower belt extends, which runs diagonally over the right shoulder. It was invented by the British officer Sam Browne, who was in service in India in the 19th century. At that time, a soldier’s sword was hanging on a small metal clip on the left belt and had to be brought into position with the left hand in order to pull it out with the right hand. When Browne lost his left hand in a battle in 1858, he came up with the idea of wearing an extra leather strap over his right shoulder to hold the scabbard of his sword in place. Other cavalry officers in the Indian army followed his example and the belt soon became an integral part of the standard uniform. 
The breeches known to us also come from India, which developed from riding breeches worn in Jodhpur at the beginning of the 20th century. The original idea of breeches was to give better flexibility in the hips and thighs when riding horses, with the lower leg tighter to fit inside riding boots. The British took over the convenient balloon-like trousers for their cavalry stationed in India. Breeches, also known as boot pants, were popular in the civil and uniform sector between 1910 and 1945.
German tailors of the Third Reich designed and manufactured almost perfect uniforms. Tight-fitting, tailored uniform jackets and shirts, precisely fitting breeches and the shiny perfection of the knee-high boots gave the officers power and dominance. “No one made a uniform like the Germans. And those boots!” said Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, in an interview in 1991. He was the first one to express this homoerotic image of hyper masculinity in his drawings. Laaksonen, however, distanced himself from Nazis and fascism, his passion for leather uniforms was completely apolitical.
In the 1950s, Marlon Brando played the role a biker with a leather jacket in the film “The Wilde One”. Brando’s peaked cap was similar to the German officer’s hat and was copied by many motorcyclists and ex-soldiers. This type of visor cap is named Muir Cap after the Toronto company that has been making hats since 1875. Motorcyclists tucked their tight jeans into high leather boots and a uniform emerged that looked even more masculine than that of the German officers, but without their moral weight.
We leather fetishists have made all these elements from around 2000 years of fashion history our own to represent our erotic fantasy. There are no limits to the possible combinations, whether full leather uniform based on centuries-old military history, leather jeans with a harness similar to Roman gladiators or a deliberate break in style – every fetishist has a wide variety to give his sexual identity an individual expression.