I’ve been a ‘perv pundit’ associated with high-end fetish publishing for 25 years now, going back to the opening of the original Skin Two Club in London in January 1983.
Today, I’m publisher and editor of online fetish magazine The Fetishistas , which I launched in February 2007 after leaving the editorship of Skin Two magazine the previous year. If you’re interested, there’s more about my fetish history after this plug for the latest edition of The Fetishistas…
Dutch fetish star Ancilla Tilia provides The Fetishistas’ April edition cover story, with a revealing interview and a gallery of hot pix from her website members’ section. On May 2, Ancilla appears at Torture Garden’s Birthday Weekend opening night, co-hosted this year by The Fetishistas. We’ll be there with Special Guests and a photo studio courtesy of Gothic Image, so please come along and say hello!
April also features a fabulous portfolio from Germany’s latex queen Susan Wayland, aka Sway. while our main fashion feature focuses on the work of Britain’s Nina Kate, the woman behind the Jane Doe Latex label.
April’s event coverage includes reports from Fetish Evolution in Germany, and the second outing of London’s Club AntiChrist. We also preview Passion, London’s new adult show, and give you the chance to win tickets in a simple competition.
The Fetishistas’ April edition offers comprehensive events listings for the weeks ahead, plus our usual rolling roster of news stories and other topical stuff — including guidance on how to lobby members of the House of Lords to change the British Government’s insidious anti-BDSM legislation, which it plans to make law by May 9.
So that’s the latest edition of The Fetishistas — see blog, bulletins and invites for more details — and this is a bit more about my fetish history:
Until 2006 I was editor (and a director) of Skin Two, widely regarded as the world’s most stylish and authoritative fetish magazine. I was for many years also a director of Skin Two’s fetish clothing and retail businesses, and provided regular creative input for its big annual London event, the Rubber Ball Weekend.
My association with the Skin Two phenomenon predates Skin Two magazine. It began when, as a senior journalist on the London music weekly Sounds, I became part of a small group of media, music, art and fashion people who helped launch the original ‘rubber club’ that bore the name, in Soho in 1983. I began contributing to the magazine after its first issue in 1984, and watched a movement that started as a darker spin-off from the New Romantic scene develop over the next ten years into a fully-fledged international subculture with its own clubs, clothing labels, shops, artists, models, photographers and magazines.
Skin Two was right at the heart of this cultural explosion, so I was perfectly placed to document, influence and participate in it. I gave up music journalism entirely in the early 1990s to become a full-time ‘professional perv’, and up to my departure earlier in 2006, led the small editorial team that successfully maintained the magazine’s reputation as the best in its field.
As well as producing magazines and newspapers and contributing to various books, I’ve edited two best-selling coffee-table fetish photo anthologies, ‘Fetish’ and ‘Sex: Take A Walk On The Wild Side’, for Carlton Books/Thunder’s Mouth Press. Further books are in the pipeline.
I remain as enthusiastic as ever about everything that goes on in the global fetish community, and in particular, I still get enormous pleasure from the discovery of fresh fetish talent and the promotion of the best of the scene’s creative endeavours. The Fetishistas is designed to combine the high quality journalism and photography of pervy print mags with the web’s immediacy, accessibility, and breadth of content, and my aim, as its publisher and editor, is simply this: to offer unrivalled, free coverage of the international fetish scene to all.
The Fetishistas also has a separate ‘corporate’ MySpace page to keep you up to date with the webzine’s activities — see my Top Friends list below.
Tony Mitchell (London, April 2008)
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
