Honor your inner kink by furnishing your bedroom with leather accessories
By Greg Marzullo
Everyone loves an inviting boudoir. Sheets with a high thread count, stylish duvet covers and a plethora of pillows are a call to divine relaxation at the end of a day or a rallying cry to hot, crazy passion.
Mind Fetish Bedding Company, a home goods company that launched in May at the International Mister Leather competition in Chicago, meets all of the leather enthusiast’s bedroom needs without stooping to kitsch or low-quality manufacturing.
Pillows, duvet covers, special dust ruffles, candles, everything that could transform your bedroom into a Tom of Finland sketch is for sale — minus the beefy studs. The company’s slogan sums it all up: “Better. Fucking. Bedding.”
“The concept came in August of 2005,” says Quincy Russell, 29 owner and creator of Mind Fetish. “I was laying in bed with a boyfriend at the time, and we had finished our business. I was looking around the room and thought, ‘I think my room needs a little sprucing up. It reflects nothing of my sexuality.’ It was beige.”
This led Brooklyn-based Russell on an odyssey to find the bedroom set that would reflect his sexual orientation and his leatherman lifestyle. After searching through stores in New York, San Francisco and even London, he decided to do it himself. Having been in the men’s wear design field for years, including a stint as the designer for Kenneth Cole’s Reaction line, Russell knew how to make it all happen.
“When I would tell people what I was working on, they would give me a strange look,” laughs Russell, but now people are singing a different tune. “The No. 1 comment is, ‘This looks nothing like we thought it would.’”
THE LOOK IS a mixture of Roman decadence and awe-inspiring craftsmanship. A two-tone leather duvet cover, with base color in black and accents in a color of your choice, is just begging to be rolled around on, and with all the company’s leather being imported from Italy, you might have a difficult time getting out of bed at all.
Of course, that could also be because you’re strapped to the “Bondage Bedskirt,” which is a standard black bed skirt with nine 12-gauge reinforced D-rings strategically placed around the uppermost edge of the ruffle.
“Once you’re not using them, they tuck right into the mattress,” Russell says.
Some of the products come with a reversible option for when a certain overbearing mother pops by unannounced. Black leather pillows with a built-in handcuff can be turned inside out, revealing a camouflage pattern or simple black fabric.
The “Filthy Mouth” linens are covered with words that you could use in a serious session of dirty talk. If you’re face down in a pillow, you won’t find yourself at a loss for words.
The sheets were developed by gay Seattle, Wash., artist Axel, who is also the staff illustrator and photographer for Instigator magazine, a hard-core gay man’s fetish publication.
“[Russell] had seen my work because of Instigator and contacted me with a particular piece they wanted,” says Axel, 39. “It snowballed from there.”
The artist has since worked on candles, soap boxes, shower curtains and pillows, and is currently discussing the possibility of designing further products with Mind Fetish.
All of this, of course, comes at a price, and anyone who’s been in the market for a pair of chaps knows that rotary-cut, hand-stitched leather goods aren’t cheap.
The queen-sized set of Filthy Mouth sheets runs $180, a fairly standard price for 400-thread-count pima cotton, second only to Egyptian cotton in quality. The throw pillows average $150. Those glamorous leather duvet covers run from $1,250 to $2,250. The full line is available at http://www.mindfetish.com/
So far, the line of products appears to have satisfied the 100 customers around the world that Mind Fetish secured in the two months since opening.
“The quality of the workmanship and the materials struck me as more of a Nordstrom’s [quality] than just Hecht’s,” says Tad Gardocki, a lawyer who lives in Atlanta, Ga. “I was impressed with the lines, the color, the use of design. It stood out amongst other things that are available.”
Russell says that his years in fashion helped him choose materials that are of the highest quality, thereby impressing his clientele.
“They see it, they touch it, they fall in love with it,” says Russell.
http://www.washblade.com/2006/7-20/arts/home/hardcoredec.cfm
(repost of original by 'Diva & Daddy' on '2006-09-23 06:13:33')
