Leather Clothing

While silk and satin have their devotees, and nothing says erotic like lace, it's also the case that no fabric says sexy like leather.  Leather lingerie items include almost all kinds of lingerie – leather knickers, leather stockings and so on, while the more fetish wear kinds of sexy clothing, such as corsets and collars, are almost always leather.

Leather is a very versatile fabric as well – it can be soft enough to make comfortable intimate apparel, or rigid enough to make shoes from, or pretty much anything in between.  Suede leather, for example, is a soft and warm leather used mostly for clothing.  When properly looked after, most kinds of leather can last for decades, retaining both its colour and texture longer than nearly any other fabric.  So in addition to its obvious virtues as a fashion icon, leather is also an excellent choice for durability and value for money!

Part of the reason for this is the wide variety of animals that leather can be made from – aside from the cattle skin that is most commonly used, there's also pig skin (used for footballs and bicycle saddles), deer skin and lamb skin (used for gloves and other uses where softness is desirable), and more exotic leathers, such as those made from ostriches, snakes or crocodiles.  Of particular note in Australia is kangaroo leather, which is used mostly for whips (especially stock whips) and motorcycle leathers.  Possibly the most obscure is sting ray leather, which is used mostly in Thailand (for belt and wallets) and Japan (for katana grips).

Leather clothing is a prominent part of fetish wear, but also stretches beyond the sexy clothing of lingerie and fetish gear into clothes that are generally accepted as everyday wear.  Leather is one of the most popular fabrics for making shoes and belts, for example – and the leather jacket worn by motorcyclists is a well known icon of rebelliousness, while the leather skirt (at almost any length) is  one of the sexier leather options.

Leather is popular among many different groups of people – aside from the fetish scene, where leather remains one of the most popular fashion choices, there's the goth and punk scenes, in which leather is quite common.  And of course, you're not really a heavy metal band (or a heavy metal fan) unless you're dressed in leather, preferably black leather.  And leather remains the fabric of choice for motorcyclists, as well as a good proportion of the gay scene.

Leather is also widely employed in the creation of various fashion accessories, from purses, wallets and handbags through to fetish gear like whips and restraints.

Of course, leather clothing is not always made from just leather -  it can be combined with nearly any other fabric to produce stunning effects.  Leather is often used for trim on the edges of garments, such as cuffs and collars; or used as a species of flexible frame to stretch other, lighter fabrics between, such as leather and fishnet combinations.  Such clothing can actually be even sexier than the same garment made from either fabric singly would be.