The Journey by Monica Menez

Came across a short film by fashion photographer Monica Menez that prominently features the female lead wearing those (oh-so-lovely) tall Gucci python boots from the current fall season. I just had to share this for all my fellow boot-lovers out there... 

A still from the movie. Yes, every boot fetishist hopes to see this whenever a car door opens...

The Journey from MONICA MENEZ on Vimeo.

The actress does a pretty amazing job of making the skyscraper heels seem almost manageable. Bravo to her! 

Straight off the runway...

Thanks to my friends over at Trendland, for the link to this visual treat.

Boot Binder Sleepsack photo shoot setup

Finally had a chance to set up a photo shoot for the boot binder sleepacks. I ended up with two final versions: one with nose holes only, and a second with an open mouth and nipple-access. 

 It's been kind of hard to complete the photo session, with all the holidays and family visits. 

 See below for the whole list:

 These are the boots that inspired the whole thing. Completely unreal looking and drool-inducing for me personally. That color is just so pretty...

 I hope to post images over the next week or so, as I have a chance to go through them. 

Hope your 2015 off to a great start! 

2014 Boot Roundup

It's a great time to be a boot fetishist (if you are one, you probably already know this) as designers are putting sexy designs into the marketplace with great regularity nowadays. Every season a fresh crop of new ideas and innovative styles pop up that push the boundaries of materials and technique even further than before. And they don't shy away from blatant, sexy S&M styling. 

All strapped up YSLs.

I'm interested not only for the fetish angle, but the design details as well. I always get inspiration for features that could be integrated into leather craft designs or bondage gear. To me shoes are the ultimate design challenge: make something beautiful but functional, completely impractical but totally sellable. Especially for the high-end brands, shoes are one place where selling the fantasy can over ride the rational part of your brain. Nobody needs a pair of 5-inch stiletto boots, but just look at them! Do we want them? Yes, we do! 

 The concept of what a designer would call negative space is a hot trend. Openings that allow the skin of the leg or foot to show through create an interplay of enclosure/exposure. Lots of designs seem to take advantage of laser-cutting techniques - a relatively recent innovation in shoe design. I'm also seeing some interesting things with woven leather (as in the Bailmans below), and almost architectural design elements (Daniele Michetti). Hand work has always been a part of shoe making, and the high end is bringing an almost craft aesthetic to some of their designs. 

Straps are happening everywhere, ranging from subtle contrasting-finish (patent on chrome-tanned leather in that subtle strap on the top of the Ballins), to the add-on almost harness look that is popping up (see the Emilio Puccis). The combination of lacing with additional straps just screams bondage to me, but hey I do see things a bit differently I suppose. 

Brian Atwood's designs are covering a lot of creative angles in use of different textures and materials to create contrast, all the while maintaing that sexy silhouette, and in a range of heights.

And finally Gucci this year had an incredible pair of boots on the runway: these skin-tight super tall beauties in black patent. 

I love the little detail of the horsebit hardware and loafer-style false front on the upper. The fit on the leg is incredible! 

 Unfortunately, by the time these hit the stores the design had been toned down a bit and they didn't fit nearly as close as the runway version. But at least they left us with these beautiful and inspiring photos. 

Making the Boot Breather!

I finally had the chance to work on the boot breather, one of my "Ten Thing I Want to Make Right Now" projects. The design sketch is below, and you can see it's sort of a cone shaped device designed to held in place with heavy straps that buckle around the head. I wanted a design that could be used with a hood and posture collar, something to ramp up the sensory experience of the sub in question: a device to force breathing of the leather-infused air inside of his mistresses high-heeled boot. 

So we begin with a wrap of the head form. We're going to wrap the form in tape, and the plastic wrap makes it easy to remove. 

My nest step is to build a plug with foam and pallet wrap to get the shape of the snout correct. I want this to fit airtight on a variety of boots. 

 

I start with a classic pair of Enzo's I had around the workshop. 

Then I went through my wife's closet and pulled out all the leather-lined boots I could find. 

 The shape seemed to fit them all pretty well... with pull-ons...

 Even the Italian beauties:

 And the sexy pointed-toe stilettos. 

 Once the shape and size of the snout checked out, I just attached it to the head form using tape and more plastic wrap. 

 I ended up cutting the nose a bit shorter, as it didn't need to be that long to work properly. 

 I start defining the form with duct-tape. 

 Referring to my sketch, I am wrapping just as far back as needed, and I am placing tape where I want the straps to go.

 I use a sharpie to indicate the shape of the lines for the edge of the piece, along with contour lines for the seams. 

 Once I'm happy with it, I cut the duct-tape off of the head form, and break it down into pattern pieces. 

 Here's where we end up: Three parts for the front of the breather, and a 2-part back piece to hold the 5 buckles. 

 Here we have the preliminary pattern pieces, ready to prototype. 

 This is where the scrap pieces come in handy. I had a nice piece of heavy, waxy leather that would be perfect for this project. 

 Parts get cut out, clipped and sewn together. 

 Got a really nice shape and fit on the first try: 

 After making the outer form, I realized I needed to figure out the shape of the stiffener for inside the snout. I used more duct tape on the form, and placed the foam back on as well: only this time it was squeezed down a bit so it would fit inside of the workpiece I had already created. Here you can see the paper shape in place: 

 And here is the paper form with the boot breather on top of it: 

 Once I was happy with that inner reinforcement shape, I cut the final piece out of "bag stiffener." This stuff is like a heavy cardboard for providing reinforcement to handbags and other items. You can get it at Tandy or here at Springfield Leather. 

 I spread the glue on what will become the inner surface of the snout...

 ...and on the bag stiffener cut to the proper shape. 

 Here's an inside view of the bag stiffener glued in place inside the snout: 

 Next I worked on the pattern for the rear buckle panel. This is really a belt with 5 straps. I had to take each strap end and extend it enough to hold the buckle in the proper position. 

 I had to make sure to give a generous seam allowance all around so there would be plenty of leather to wrap around. 

 That piece is cut out and glued...

 ...and all the seams are turned to create the final curved shape. 

 Once the edges are turned, the whole thing is topstitched along the edge. 

 I make up a set of belt-keeper loops and straps to extend the length of the straps on the face of the mask. 

 The keepers and buckles are riveted in place. I went with a 1.25" buckle, to intentionally give the piece a "heavy-duty" look and feel. 

Check back later to see how it all turned out...

Restricted Senses armbinder, hood & posture collar photos

I received an email the other day from the nicest person (whom I'll refer to henceforth as Mr. X). He was contacting me for advice on the kind of leather that may work for the armbinder pattern I recently posted, and sent along an image of a prototype he put together (with a zip closure in black vinyl). Mr. X did modify the pattern, as he knew that his model was very flexible, and that her elbows could touch when bound (lucky man...). Needless to say, the photo below caught my eye, and I was more than happy to share some advice with him. 

Just a beautiful, candid picture...

A couple of days later, he sends along a whole set of incredible photos, this time of the finished project: a soft leather hood, laced armbinder and tall locking posture collar, all laced up tight and shackled onto his poor, unfortunate, (or very lucky, depending on how you see these things) slave girl. 

Everything good and wonderful: the girl, the hood, the collar, the armbinder, the boots... 

 Yeah, I nearly fell out of my chair. The photos were just awesome! This beautiful Asian girl, so completely, helplessly, and...

 ...tightly bound! Would you check out how close her elbows are? (Nice touch with the little bell, BTW...) 

The bell can help you keep track of her as she wonders around the house...

 And I'm pretty sure he gagged her under the hood as well... 

That is the full 3.5 inch tall (very severe) posture collar, I think...

You can see the complete set of images on Mr. X's tumblr site. There are other photo sets to be found there as well, each more lovely than the last. If you have a passion for this kind of bondage, it's worth a look (Dear sammy, there's lots there I think you would like...). Like this one:

Check out Restricted Senses' tumblr site here. And thank you Mr. X and your gorgeous slave girl, for sharing your project pix with us! We're not worthy...