London Fetish Weekend 2008 – Torture Garden
by Josselin Guichard on Oct.04, 2008, under Party Report, Torture Garden
Torture Garden
Saturday 04 October 2008 @ London (Mass)
Torture Garden was back this month headlining the London Fetish Weekend, bigger and better than ever. Perhaps we’re all back from our holidays, perhaps we need relief from the daily grind and the shortening days, or perhaps it’s just more pleasant to wear latex now it’s cooler. Whichever it is, TG was bigger and better than ever, and people were partying like it was the end of the world … at least until the next big night.
Using a fuller Mass layout, the dungeon occupied the downstairs boudoir and the upper floor was taken over by 2 dancefloors to cater to eclectic tastes … increasing eclectic in fact as the night went on. The main room was just non stop, with sets by Allen TG and Janette Slack that had the crowds bouncing and whooping. Many old friends returned for our entertainment : Midori and Kumi graced us with caged bondage, while in the other room Katz Maffioletti conducted medical experiments of the performance kind. On the main stage of the Eclectic Room, when the stage wasn’t taken over by a very cheerful dancer in a kaftan, there were a succession of shows for our delectation : Pandemonia presented some full-on rubberwear, German AMF Korsets combined suspension and fashion, Ryan Styles’ wowed with cabaret interludes. In the dungeon, Charles Gatewood’s visit to London and exhibition were celebrated in an installation by Switch Theatre.
Pandemonia’s take on latex is one of fun and glamour in full bodysuits : blow-up accessories figured as Eve’s snake, film star hair, as the hat of a glorious black and white diva, armed with a bubblegun, greeted with cheers. Ryan Style’s cabaret provided some welcome levity before the next act ..
AMF Korsets’s show had a primeval quality to it – the virgin sacrifice, the goddess of fertility and fire. The flames, the piercing and suspension, the leather of the corsets all called upon our deepest, darkest desires, the very baseness of our natures. Though it started as a more traditional fashion show, it grew gradually stranger and stranger as you realised that one model’s lips were in fact a part of her mum (the technical term I have recently learned for a neck-corset that covers the chin and mouth), that the mechanical device on another’s was going to be used to stretch her lip like a National Geographic African tribal picture, or that the “wings” of the suspendee were attached not to her corset, but to the hooks placed in her tattooed skin. The beautiful fire eater acted as an eerie priestess for AMF’s dark idol, lighting flames along the headdress of the goddess, along her skin and before her own nipples. I was left with a strange prickling sensation along my own back – and a burning (no pun intended) desire to own one of AMF’s pieces.
The bloodlust could be worked off in the dungeons or one the dancefloor, which grew gradually more frenzied. There was a definite feeling, as was being discussed in the enlargened outdoor smoking marquee, that this was the first of the big parties, that the festive season was back for the pervs and the kinksters, that this was the beginning of the best bit. Everyone was talking about TG’s Halloween party in tones of excitement and anticipation, and we can rest assured that London Fetish Weekend has kicked off a new festive season.
