Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
Join Edge as he shares his 30+ years of experience in leather, kink, and BDSM. Each episode centers around a theme, explored through several segments. In the first, Edge shares his leather journey in relation to that theme in order to draw some larger lessons about the leather community. In the second segment, the focus is on practical knowledge and history. Then, we speak with another member of the community who shares their knowledge and experience in relation to the theme. Occasionally, there will also be bonus segments, like erotic story time or kink centered meditation. Come learn more about leather, kink, and BDSM with Edge.
Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
Suits
A suit can announce power to the room and whisper surrender to the one person who knows how to read it. We sit down with Doctor Tom, a self-described Sir and suit fetishist, to unpack how tailoring, uniform codes, and ritual details transform wool and silk into tools for desire. From Bond’s tux getting ripped to the scent of warm leather dress shoes, we trace the sensory and psychological threads that make suits a stealth fetish—hyper-visible to everyone, invisible to most.
We map the terrain where menswear meets military lineage: structured shoulders, tall collars, and the ceremonial logic that mirrors leather protocols. Doctor Tom shares practical starting points—why thrifting post-COVID is gold, how to spot quality construction, and why a good tailor is your best accomplice. We explore community “tells” like sheer dress socks and double Windsors, Instagram codes, and Recon tags, plus why excess is a signal and restraint often reads vanilla. Along the way we tackle elitism, access, and red flags, and we highlight a crucial reminder: suit fetish is gender inclusive, and gender-affirming tailors exist.
We also cross the aisle into leather—formal looks rebuilt in hide, the satisfaction of hierarchy, and the pleasure of rules you know well enough to break once, on purpose. In Ask Edge, we address accepting masochism, the need for mutual enjoyment in DS play, and resources for emotional fluency. Then we turn to kink on screen, calling out what lands and what misfires, and why some sacred spaces might be better served by community-made stories.
If suits have ever made your pulse quicken—or you want to build a look that doubles as a scene—this conversation gives you history, tactics, and permission to play. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves a good knot, and leave a review telling us your first suit memory.
Ask Edge! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/LTHREDGE to leave ask a question or leave feedback. Find Edge's other content on Instagram and Twitter. Also visit his archive of educational videos, Tchick-Tchick.
Let's talk about suits. This podcast contains material intended for a mature audience. Before proceeding, please check your little laws and confirm that you are an adult. Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about Leather King and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he him, and I'm your host. And in this episode, we're going to be exploring the suit fetish. This is not a particular fetish of mine, although I do enjoy a good-looking, good-fitting suit. And I had an X three X's ago. My XXX Tom really was into suits and sort of got me a little bit into suits. But since this is not really a strong fetish of mine, I am going to have an interview with Dr. Tom, who is a suit fetishist. And then we're going to have a couple of asked questions, and that's going to be the episode. I think this is a really interesting fetish to explore, and I loved the way Dr. Tom talked about it. I hope you will too. Let's get started. And I would like to welcome Dr. Tom to Full Cow. Dr. Tom, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for having me, sir. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure. Could you start by telling us your pronouns and how you identify in the community?
SPEAKER_01:My name is Dr. Tom. My pronouns are he, his. And uh I identify in the community as a sir, and I'm still very much learning my way in what that means. Um, I have two uh boys in the leather community who have approached me and have been mentoring under me for the last year, and I have four proteges in the suit fetish community. Those are all online.
SPEAKER_00:Well, speaking of the suit fetish community, that is our topic for this episode. And can you start by telling us a little bit about the fetish? Imagine I'm a listener who is just hearing that this even exists. Can you give us a sense of what it really is about?
SPEAKER_01:So it is a clothing fetish, first and foremost, and it is a uniform fetish. Um so when you go through the clothing fetish side of things, there are clothing fetishes for high viz gear, for rubber gear, construction work, uh construction uh workers' gear, cowboys. So you can imagine how with every kind of clothing, occupational especially, um, there is a fetish community, either mainstream or niche, devoted specifically to that. And when you think about the elements of a suit and tie, the shirt, the tie, the highly structured jacket, the tailoring, uh, you can imagine that uh that easily traces over into uniform fetish. And that is because menswear traces many of its same inspirations as um it traces it traces many of its same inspirations from military gear. Uh it's notable that Hugo Boss, one of the oldest menswear designers, uh designed the SS uniforms of the Hitler regime. That's not exactly a flattering. It's not a glowing recommendation. It's not a glowing recommendation, but it shows that there is a linkage between suits and power. Um and that linkage is always problematic because, well, when we're talking about uniform fetish, there's always the fascination with power, same with suits. Uh the power with suits, I would say, goes along more lines of corporate financial or political power, whereas with uh other forms of uniform, it tends to be more power based on physicality and um state violence, if we want to get very, very, very historical. But anyway, that we're I'm digressing. Um so it's so suit fetish is a form of clothing fetish and a form of uniform fetish that is perhaps more civilian than a uniform fetish, but more structured than a clothing fetish.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great answer. And I also love that you're pointing inherently there's some power dynamics involved, which I'm sure then comes out in some of the play. But I'm curious, how did you first get into suits? How did you discover that had an erotic charge for you?
SPEAKER_01:For me, uh I came from a lower middle class um military family. So my father always had military uniforms, but for some reason only the dress uniforms appealed to me, the ones that involved essentially a sh a suit and tie, but with military regalia. And in films like James Bond or these were the Sean Connery, Roger Moore, James Bond, um, or um Indiana Jones, uh, what fascinated me was watching this protagonist who would start off well dressed and he would end up in some compromising situation, and his suit and tie would end up uh in some way compromised or ruined as well. So for me, the linkage was very much between uh power and humiliation and watching the uh suit and tie outfit unravel as a sign of loss of control or a sign of uh diminishing power. So uh for me, it was um even though I didn't know how to articulate the fascination at the time, that linkage between suits, power, and humiliation, I think, was what really resonated.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I uh it makes me think of my childhood and Batman and Robin. And um what you're describing is also, I think, very prevalent in the kind of superhero fetish community where it's often about making this this powerful superhero completely weak. And is it the same sort of dynamic that you like?
SPEAKER_01:Most certainly, yes. Um especially in the media that I mentioned, in which the hero is always the most well-dressed in the room. Whenever James Bond gets into a fight, I mean this didn't happen very often, admittedly, in even the Sean Connery or the Roger Moore James Bonds, but whenever he gets into a fight, I would always want to imagine that his suit would end up getting ripped or something like that to offer a tantalizing glimpse of what was underneath. Um it wasn't until much later when I was um a much more fully fledged adult that the Roger that the um Daniel Craig James Bonds came along and actually delivered on that long unfulfilled promise. There was one scene in uh one of the Daniel Craig Is it Casino Royale? I think so. There was I think it was Casino Royale where he starts off in a tux and his tuxedo is well, okay, he is tied to a chair and his tuxedo is ripped off him in this chair. So we've got bondage, we've got clothed male, nude male. Um just that scene was a chef's kiss moment for me, and I thought, where was this 30 years ago?
SPEAKER_00:I think there was some serious CBT too, if I'm if I'm rem remembering the scene. Yeah, like that scene's super internal.
SPEAKER_01:There was a fetishist somewhere on that writing team, and I thank him or her or them. However that person identifies, please please call me, whoever that person is, I would love to pick their brain.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, if you've not seen it, it's definitely worth watching it just for that scene. Um, do you find there's also like for me, I know there's also a sensory component to leather, the the feel of it and the smell of it and the the sound it makes. Is there also generally a sensory component in the suit fetish? And and what are you resonating to there?
SPEAKER_01:Uh with suits, it has less to do with sound and more to do with smell and texture. Fine wool has a particular aroma, and when you go, so there are there are not that many high-quality tailors these days. It is something of a dying art, but if ever you go into an old-fashioned menswear store, having that many bolts or samples of wool in one single place, you get this aroma that is um that is redolent of richness and luxury and masculinity. So the wool itself has an aroma, especially when it gets sweaty. Um that's a thing. And the silk too. Uh that you know, there are a number there's a subset of the suit fetish guys who are into uh custom tailored garments that have set custom satin linings or satin shirts, and so that textural component plays into it and the aroma of it, um, the luster. So the tie, of course, is um a particular area of interest because uh they aren't that often worn these days. And so the tie itself uh lents itself to all manner of devious play, and it is uh a very sensual component of the outfit in its own right. Uh, and this, of course, is to say nothing of the dress shoes themselves, which have many of the same appeals as leather. Uh we know that leather has a heady aroma when it is suffused with sweat. Uh, it is an aroma that lends itself to tobacco and smoking. Um I have known at least one gentleman in the soup fetish community who has a specific kink for having someone take his shoe off and strapping it to his face as a shoe gag so that he's forced to inhale it. Um you can imagine that I mean that's basically what the sneaker guys do, but with dress shoes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I love that you're really mapping out a community that intersects a lot of other communities. What I'm hearing is um it intersects, it's very close to uniforms. It certainly has to do with the clothed male, naked male, that's a whole community. I'm hearing also as well, um, the power dynamics, and then all of these other sort of related fetishes all kind of intersect, including people with a foot fetish. And I actually I know that some people have specifically have a dress size. Almost certainly too.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and this is probably this is because so if I may go into history a little bit. So one of the predecessors of Tom of Finland, so when you're talking about the uh lineage of uh homoerotic illustrators who um resonate with the uh with the gay community, a predecessor to Tom of Finland was a gentleman named uh J C Leondecker. Uh Leon Decker, Leondecker, I think it's Leandecker. L-E-Y-E-N. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not sure I've heard.
SPEAKER_01:L-E-Y-E-N-D-E-C-K-E-R. So Lion Deckercker illustrated for Arrow shirts. So he did these beautiful illustrations of gentlemen wearing very much Ivy League Oxonian kind of suits and ties. And he also did illustrations for the Boston Sock Garter Company and for several dress sock companies. And the way that he illustrated the dress socks had the the socks had a kind of silky translucency to them that was almost femme. Um and so that tantalizing translucency that gives just a bare glimpse of a gentleman's ankles. This is very Victorian, uh, very Edwardian, uh, a gentleman's ankles underneath the suit, that's a specific thing. So there are guys who are into dress socks, and there are guys who are into sheer dress socks, ones that are purposefully transparent. Um in fact, I would propose that one of the chief tells of the suit fetish community is that uh the straight menswear boys never ever would they they wouldn't be caught dead wearing a sheer dress sock the way that we want them to. It's the sheer dress socks themselves that are something of a form of flagging because they are so effete and luxurious and so dandyish that a straight guy would never touch them. And that's a part of the allure.
SPEAKER_00:I love hearing that. That's fantastic. Uh, if someone wants to get into the suit fetish, how do they start? What sort of price point are we looking at? Does does it is like certainly the leather community more expensive leather is more coveted, is hotter. Is that the same, like, is a more expensive suit hotter than a cheaper suit? Like, give us a sense of how someone might get into it.
SPEAKER_01:Certainly the expense is there. Um, I've known one gentleman in the suit fetish community who has a specific kink for spending several thousand British pounds on a custom suit and then gunging it and utterly ruining it. Um most of us do not have that bank account balance. Um so the way I started was in thrift stores. Um I think that that is perhaps the best entry point because we happen to be at a point in time right now, past COVID, where office dress codes have shifted drastically. Guys don't really have much of a reason to keep suit, you know, a suit and tie in their wardrobes anymore. And so uh you can actually get some reasonably good suits for a fraction of what you would have gotten them for at retail. Um so getting a suit at a thrift store and then just taking it to be altered, I think, would be the best entry point. Uh it would probably run between 150 and 250 250 um uh US dollars for most people because the suit itself might cost$75 to$150, and then you're asking for alterations on top of that. But when you're thinking about how an off-the-rack suit runs routinely in excess of$500 when it's bought new, that actually is a bargain. Um of course, save up and you know, spend responsibly and all that. Uh it's I think because leather has to be purchased from spet uh from specialized retailers and from specialized uh artisans, I believe leather is actually a little bit more difficult to come by than a suit. Oh, it is and leather is not as forgiving because um leather, most leather gear cannot be altered. I mean, not you'd have to have a very specialized artisan in store to be able to do it. Uh suits are comparatively much easier to alter in person, at least. Um, so I think that that's one advantage to it. Um then, of course, there are plenty of online retailers like Propercloth and Spire McKay and so forth, where uh they do this whole eye tailoring thing where you enter your own measurements and they plug it into some fancy formula and voila come up with a suit that almost fits. Um I've had some luck with them, though um they can't really take into account the particulars of a person's frame. One of my shoulders is half an inch lower than the right, and there's no way for me to get an algorithm to understand that. And so um there are particulars like that to be taken into account, but generally speaking, thrifted is the best way to get started. And if you can travel to a city that happens to have something like suit supply or men's warehouse, uh those would be suitable places to get started as well. The aficionados in the suit fetish community, the ones who have uh a considerable degree of income and privilege and access, they can have um a multitude of suits that they just wear and they will play in in a limited capacity, and then they have what they call their play suits, which are um suits that are passable but cheaper, and uh you can get away with all manner of more devious activities in those. Um as you can imagine, the suit fetish uh intersects with a good many of other fetishes, and one of them is water sports. There are several dozen gentlemen I can name off the top of my head in the suit fetish community who specifically enjoy getting pissed on in their suits. And I think that relates back to humiliation, power dynamics, all of that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, the other thing you're making me think about, particularly when you're talking about thrifting, uh, this is a fetish you can explore without anyone knowing you're exploring a fetish. Right? If you're walking around in leather, people kind of know you're walking around in leather. You could be walking around in a suit, living a kind of erotic component of your life, and nobody knows.
SPEAKER_01:It is uh it is both hyper-visible and invisible at the same time. It's hyper-visible in the same- Oh what a given. I mean, right, it's hyper-visible in the sense that nobody wears suits anymore unless they have a reason to.
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_01:And so it's hyper-visible in the sense that uh if you walk into a place like I mean, I've walked into the Atlanta Eagle wearing a suit and tie before, and before guys actually knew me there, they would ask me whether I had just gotten in from a wedding or a conference nitty. And so it's hyper-visible in the sense that people will pay attention to you when you're wearing a suit, but they won't be paying attention to you for fetish reasons. They'll be paying attention to you for social reasons. Um, so it's hyper-visible in that sense and invisible in the other sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that's a beautiful pairing to put together. Um and I I love this notion that it's a fetish you can explore, that only you know, the entry point's not that steep, couple hundred bucks. I mean, that's a lot, but it's not as much as even the basic item of leather, right? So it's a it's a fetish you can explore and experience as well that hypervisibility and that invisibility that comes with a degree of safety, particularly if you're not in a big city, right?
SPEAKER_01:Um if you're in the southeastern United States or other places where there's still, frankly, that kind of conservative church culture, uh, suits are actually somewhat more permissible and acceptable because people will assume that you've been to a church function or something like that. And that, of course, leads to all manner of uh delicious scenarios and possibilities in its own varieties. Um I mean, I've in the suit fetish community online, because it is mostly online these days, um, it is the same seven or eight hundred fellows I've followed from platform to platform to platform. Most of us are in it are on Instagram these days. And I've interviewed many of them asking them what started this for you, and many of them will point to a high school teacher, a pastor, sometimes their fathers, sometimes weathermen or news anchors. Those tend to be the four chief things that they point to from their childhoods as um things that stimulated this fetish for them to begin with, that or the movies, which was my case.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I think there's something also so beautifully special feeling about wearing a suit. You know, I don't wear it often, but when you when I get in, when I get dressed up, I feel I feel fancy, right? Like it's a beautiful celebration in I don't know, it just makes me feel good about who I am when I'm dressed really nice.
SPEAKER_01:It's a sensual experience for sure. And when a suit is tailored properly, it forces you into particular into a particular posture. Um, this is getting into the intersections between classical menswear and military gear. Because when you take away all the fancy components of a suit, and when you take away all of the regalia of a military uniform, you come up with essentially the same garments. That that tailored jacket that emphasizes the shoulders, it is nipped at the waist, it emphasizes the chest.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That is a classically military silhouette that is in common between military dress uniforms and suits.
SPEAKER_00:That's a beautiful connection as well. And I I do love that you also recommended that people get a suit tailored because there's everyone looks better in tailored clothing, period. And it and it doesn't really matter how your body is shaped, because the person you're working with will make sure the clothes are fitting you correctly. And that there's nothing feels better than that.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. I mean, and if you're, you know, if you're not into the whole wet and messy water sports side of things, you want your suit to actually survive to the light of day, then there is a longevity that comes with it. Because a well-tailored suit is going to have additional fabric built into the seams so that it can be taken in or let out to some degree. And so it is meant to be a garment that you keep. It is not meant to be disposable. That unfortunately is a part of the reason why the initial cost of a suit can be prohibitive for many people. But what I've found is that I mean, I saved up in graduate school back in 2009 uh for my first custom suit, and I still wear it, you know, nearly 20 years since I got it. It still fits. It has I've had it altered a few times and repaired a few times, but it is meant to be a garment that lasts when it is built correctly. And I think that that attitude about, you know, garments and disposability, suits are a kind of counterpoint to that because they hail back to a culture that wanted tailored clothing that lasted. And again, I see I think this is part of the reason why um I see a great deal of commonality between the suit commun uh between suit fetish and leather fetish, because in let in the leather community there's that culture of keeping pieces of gear and handing them down. And that I find to be very meaningful and attractive in many ways, not just sexually, because I certainly enjoy the smell of another man's scent on a piece of secondhand gear, but also because um there's longevity, there's tradition with it, and I think that there's a great deal of richness to that that uh that I appreciate.
SPEAKER_00:So you've talked a little bit about the fetish community, that it's you know, several hundred men, they seem to be on Instagram. Where how do how do people go find other suit fetishes? Like Instagram's a big place. What should they be searching for? Who should they be following? What's the deal? How do I find other people?
SPEAKER_01:So this is tricky because there are a number of men's of straight menswear influencers who will a suit and tie and everything. But they're not they're not one of us. Um and I think it it has taken me many years to kind of figure out the code. Because unlike with the leather community that has, you know, a literature and whole manuals and everything devoted to it, suit fetishes something of an invisible club. Um so the sheer socks, I think, are one of the chief tells. One of the other tells is the double winds or knot. So because the tie itself is very phallic symbol, the double winds or knot is this particularly bloated erect. You think I'm joking?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think you're perfectly accurate. I'm just saying it.
SPEAKER_01:Um fist of silk cresting at your neck, and it is purposefully lavish and excessive. I think that that's one of the key things that I've noticed with the men's the uh suit fetish guys versus the straight menswear guys. The straight menswear guys show restraint and they feel almost apologetic for wearing a suit. The suit fetish guys don't care. For us, more is more. Accessories, blingy cufflinks, braces, sleeve garters, sock garters, the whole nine yards. The more lavish, the better. Some of them will wear multiple double Windsor ties stacked on top of each other as a kind of uh neck constriction breath play sort of thing. Uh some of them will wear um very, very high-collared uh shirts that have like four or five buttons between the top of the neck band of the collar and the bottom. These are custom shirts, clearly. So I think the key thing is that there's a kind of excess in that marked suit fetish from ordinary menswear. It's purposefully dandyish and excessive and indulgent.
SPEAKER_00:You know, that makes me think of the cigar community where like 70 ring, and people are getting 80 rings, and then they're getting 90 rings, and then they're getting 140 rings. It's like bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
SPEAKER_01:Queerness gives us permission to be excessive. Moderation is for the straits.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I think you also mentioned recon or that you were on recon. Is that a good place if I wanted to talk to other people?
SPEAKER_01:That was actually back when I was in my 20s. Uh, so my recon name is Dr. Tom. Dr. spelled, you know, spelled out, not D-R, but D O C T R. Dr. Tom. And um recon does have a specific tag for suits. That was actually my first introduction to the community. And that and that was because I joined Recon back in 2004. That was before Instagram, just about before Facebook, even. Um so that was my introduction to the suit fetish community. But prior to Recon, the Suit Fetish community existed on discussion forums and Yahoo Messenger groups, M IRC. Um the first actual suit fetish site was started by a pair of gentlemen who were into both wet and messy play and suits and ties, and they started a discussion board called Min at Play. I don't know if you're familiar with Min at Play because right now it sounds fairly. You've more than likely seen one or two images from it. Um, it has since become the chief suit fetish porn site. However, in the early 2010s, I believe it was, uh, those two gentlemen sold the rights to Minute Play to a mainstream porn company. And the suit fetishists were all up in arms about this because all of a sudden the suits would come off midway through the video, which meant that we who wanted to subscribe to Minute Play to get a complete suit fetish video every single week were really getting only half of one.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And I imagine that that is the tale of many websites that start off niche or fetish and start to go mainstream. Um but uh so at any rate, recon I think was my best way of learning who was into suits and into fetish for sure, because if you're on recon, there's a reason you're there. Um and there's a specific tag for it. Instagram on Instagram the coding is a little bit more oblique, but there's that always that sense of excess and luxury. And it it's the distinction between someone who puts on a suit because their mommy told them to because they had to go to church, versus someone who is into suits. It has a lot to do with tone.
SPEAKER_00:You also have told me that this is a fetish that you've seen shrink quite a bit. And can you tell us a little bit about what you've been seeing globally with this fetish and what those factors are?
SPEAKER_01:COVID was certainly one of the sharpest factors for the decline of it, but frankly, the decline was already happening well before COVID. Office dress codes changed after Steve Jobs pronounced Casual Friday as every day. And as a result, um as a result of the decline of office dress codes, suits became much more difficult to find in the wild, so to speak. Um and so for a while in the early 2010s, you know, guys are wearing bow ties and suspenders, and there was the whole hoopster thing, and it looked like for a brief moment there was a revitalization, but it turns out that that revitalization was itself a trend and therefore transitory. I think a lot of this there are a lot of factors at play here. I think the chief one is that office dress codes um went from suits to more casual, and people wanted to seem more like part of the team than. Than uh a standout. And so the suit became something that uh would draw attention to you in a negative way because you seemed as though you were dressing better than your peers, and as a result, you weren't a team player anymore. Um in certain fields, such as politics and finance and real estate, you still see suits and ties on occasion. Um with realtors in particular, they tend to be quite the peacocks. Uh with bankers and politicians, they tend to be a bit more stayed. Um but in general, I think that that recession of suits from the mainstream to uh from something that used to be the corporate uniform to now something that's worn either for funerals, court appearances, maybe a job interview or two, and maybe weddings. I think that that plays a key role. Oh, one other tell, by the way. Suit feathers guys always wear a tie with the suit. They almost never go open-collar.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, I mean that actually makes sense to me. I feel like it's a whole complete look as it is.
SPEAKER_01:To us, wearing a suit with an open-collar shirt looks like you forgot to put something on. And we will quietly read you the filth for it.
SPEAKER_00:I have no doubt you will. Uh so I love that idea of thrifting. I wanted to go back to it because let's say, again, I'm new to this, I go to my local thrift store, there's a rack full of suits. What should I be looking for in terms of how to tell whether it's a quality suit or, you know, how like what what do I look for?
SPEAKER_01:If you're looking at a thrift store, you're definitely going to want to inspect the garment carefully to make sure that it is uh still wearable. Uh one of my play suits was a thrifted suit supply suit that was marked quote unquote heavily stained, and I thought, oh, well, I guess I could do something about that. And there were visible stains on it that apparently the previous owner had either neglected to remove or did not know how to remove, and I thought, well, there's only one way that this suit's going to be used now, but that's perfectly fine to my purposes. Um, so you're going to want to make sure that it's it is not stained or ripped or soiled in some way. High quality wool is going to feel more like silk than like wool. That's one chief thing that I noticed. So feeling the suit in person is significant. The lining of the suit the the lesser quality suits are going to feel like a polyester lining. There's going to be a kind of um artificial sort of rustle to them when you feel them. Whereas the higher quality suits are going to have a lining that feels more supple and silky. Um there's the whole deal with how the lapels are constructed. If the lapels are glued instead of stitched, stitched lapels are obviously the higher quality ones. Um so small details like that. There are plenty of mentwear videos made by little straight boys who have no idea what the suit fetish is, but they they have provided us with so much fodder and so much so much instruction that they did not intend to uh provide. Um there are plenty of mentor guides, uh mentor guides online that can tell you how to find a decent quality suit at a thrift store. Um there is also the possibility of going custom, but as you can imagine, that's a question of uh income and access. And going custom means that you get to sit there and and have an actual tailor guide you through the whole process of selecting fabrics and everything, and through their expert opinion, you'll be guided accordingly. Uh, but obviously that's not available to everybody. So I do think certain labels like Spire McKay and Suit Supply are good to look for because they're reliable. Uh they are understood to be high quality. Men's Warehouse used to be higher quality, but it has diminished. Brooksbudders used to be higher quality, but it too has diminished, which is a shame. There was a collective mourning when Brooks Bedders Brooks Buddhists actually filed for bankruptcy in the months following COVID. I know. They're still around, but uh they're under new ownership, and I'm afraid their quality reflects this. Um the main thing is going to be the feel in the construction of the suit.
SPEAKER_00:As far as well, I also love that you're pointing out like there's a ton of videos online that will actually tell you how to thrift for a shoot for a suit, so you can just go do your own research. That's a great, you know, sometimes finding fetish information is really hard, but here we have because it has such a role in normal, quote unquote, normal society that we have all that much more competition.
SPEAKER_01:It has a role in vanilla society. Maybe we should put it that way. It has a role in vanilla society, and therefore there are plenty of vanilla resources that are perfectly innocent. And, you know, if you're concerned about your employer viewing your web traffic, you could just say, I was just trying to learn how to dress better professionally. And you could actually say that with a straight face.
SPEAKER_00:That's true. Uh so as we're sitting here recording this, you're part in leather and part in dress clothes. And can you talk a little bit about the intersection of leather and suits? How many people tend to be into both? Where does that intersection look like?
SPEAKER_01:So there are some gentlemen who actually get leather suits. So a leather suit jacket as opposed to the more biker style of jacket that I'm wearing at the moment. Um and so a leather suit jacket, um it is going to be a very specific look. It is probably not something that you'd be able to get away with in daylight hours. Um it looks a black leather suit jacket looks like you should be wearing it with a cowboy hat and a bolo tie, and you should look slightly clueless about the fashion choices you've made. Um however, if you're wearing it I'm being snide, but if you're wearing it with intention, a leather suit jacket can be very hot. And uh one of the things I would love to do is replicate a formal tuxedo look, but all in leather. So I would probably do that with a leather suit jacket, leather pants, equestrian boots, um, a leather shirt, and a leather bow tie. I do have a leather bow tie, by the way. It took me several tries to find one. You have to find you have to find a c a leather bow tie that uh is a soft enough leather that you can actually ply it into the correct knot. Uh it is not a pre-tied bow tie. We do not speak of those.
SPEAKER_00:Um I didn't think you'd be.
SPEAKER_01:Most of the leather guys go for a foreign hand, and the suit fetish guys universally disdain the foreign hand. You're making it a face.
SPEAKER_00:No, because it is almost impossible to tie a leather tie. Like t leather ties are really horrible pieces of wardrobe because they're not designed to.
SPEAKER_01:I went through four different leather ties before I found a single one that tied a knot to my satisfaction. And actually, at one of my first bluff events when I was there wearing my first leather tie, one of the bluff gentlemen said, Oh, let me tell you how to tie this tie. And I gave him a very sharp look, and I told him, I've been wearing ties since before you were born. You are not about to tell a suit fetishist how to tie a tie in front of God and everybody. It turns out that it was the tie's fault, not mine. Um the knot that I go for with the softer leather ties that I have is actually a single windsor. Um because there isn't actually enough length to the tie to form a full double windsor. Uh and this has to do with the way that when you're tying a silk tie, the silk will lie next to itself and make a much tighter and more compact knot that can be shaped more easily. Whereas with leather, uh, there's not as much give. It's not as forgiving. And so this is why I find the floor in hand to be particularly unsightly with a leather tie, because it is just so boxy and negligent. And that won't do.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think the other problem with leather ties is they are almost universally skinny ties. They feel very inner. So um yeah, and and that's the look, this this skinny tie that you can't tie.
SPEAKER_01:I know, I've had to make my peace with the skinniness of it, but I've at least found some leather ties that will form a decent knot. Um and uh let's see. I'm trying to remember what was the root question of this part of the conversation.
SPEAKER_00:It was um the intersection of leather and suits.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Uh a good many of the um suit fetish guys are also leathermen. And I think that that's because of the mutual fascination with the uniform. All the protocol manuals of leather specify uh when I was reading um it was John Wheel's Leatherman's Protocol handbook, I was flipping through it and I was thinking, this is a menswear manual. But with hotter pictures. This is fun. And so a lot of the older leather literature actually has some of the same prescriptive tone as old menswear guides. Um and that specification of you know, you wear full cow for high formal formal occasions just as you would wear white tie for a high formal occasion. Black tie is actually second tier, um, if you're going by very classical menswear rules. So that degree of hierarchy and occasion, I think, uh, is a very natural area of intersection between the two. You wear certain things.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the the other I mean the the the other thing you're talking about that is a very natural intersection is the um the number of rules and the number of details to get right. Like classically, for uniform fetishists, it's like every piece of the uniform has to be right completely accurate. And I and I'm hearing that in the suit fetish world as well, there's a kind of part of the pleasure of it is the obsession with the details and getting every single thing right by the way.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And of course, one deviance here, and well, no, it's not necessarily deviation. It's because I think the gentlemen who are really into leather have figured out the classical leather look, and then they figure out ways to tinker with the uniform so that you're following all the rules except one. And I think um that too plays a role in um the way menswear aficionados style ourselves. We know all the classical rules, and we can dress like Don Draper if we wanted to, but we don't have to. And so the moment you choose to break a rule, you have marked ownership of the look.
SPEAKER_00:That's a power move.
SPEAKER_01:It is a power move. I mean one of the fun things about suit fetish is that uh to vanillas, the suit is going to embody power and a command of one's presence and a command of one's appearance. To the suit fetish guys, it can play both ways. The suit can certainly be the uniform of power, or it could be the uniform of conformity and submission. So there are some guys who very much lean into being the corporate drone, told what to wear, and expected to show up after hours for a proper beating. Um, or there are some suit fetish guys who are specifically into butler play. And as you can imagine, that is a very natural crossover into leather. Um one of the chief forms of play that I engage with um when it comes to gentlemen online is uh dress code management. Uh what tie shall I wear today, sir? Well, boy, show me your top three that you haven't worn in the last several weeks. And I make a selection and I tell him, pick one, pick a shirt that goes with this tie. You were good you were good last night, so I'll I'll let you decide on a pocket silk. But if he insists, I'll tell him very well, then it appears that you're being indecisive as always.
SPEAKER_00:I think that does sound very similar to what a master would do with his slave, a daddy would do with his boy. So it's really the same dynamic, just replicated in a different clothing. Fantastic. Is there anything else you want to share with people about the suit fetish or for our listeners who might be getting into this?
SPEAKER_01:So I've spoken in overwhelmingly positive terms about it because it is certainly something that is near and dear to my heart, and it is something that uh that resonates with me deeply. But one of the chief problems that I find with the suit fetish community is that it can be very elitist and cliquish. And for those of us who do not live in New York or London, it's nearly inaccessible. Um I can count on one hand the number of suit fetish guys who live within 600 miles of me. Uh, and that is because I mean there are a few of us in Atlanta, there are a few of us in Asheville, and that's and and Charlotte as well, so cities. But the thing is, there are a lot there are not that many guys who declare suits as their chief fetish. However, most every gay man I've ever spoken to has a fascination with suits. There is the implicit understanding that suits are equated with masculinity and that a man looks his best when he is suited, and there is a sexual charge with that that resonates with people even if they don't have a specific fetish for it. So there are ways to work around it, even if you don't have access to the most opulent pockets of the suit fetish community. Um as with any fetish community, there are bad actors to avoid. And I think that many of those um signals of who is a bad actor, those are signals that carry over into any other community. People who claim a power dynamic that they have not earned, people who monetize um their sex appeal in ways that uh even a fend DOM would find problematic. Um so I think if a person chooses to engage with this community, it can be a bit inaccessible at first just because the tells are um hidden in plain sight. And it can be inaccessible at first because you might not have physical access to the same spaces that these people do. Uh so it might feel as though you have to kind of like hide your suit fetish, even though a leather fetish can be understood as fetish if you wear it in the right context. Suit fetish almost is never understood as fetish. And so it has to be explained as such, even though the appeal is implicitly there.
SPEAKER_00:So it's not all rainbows and unicorns. There are some challenges to this.
SPEAKER_01:There are, but at the same time, you can just say fuck it and have fun.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the perfect note to end on. What a beautiful message. Dr. Tom, thank you so much for joining us on Full Cow and teaching us about suit.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, sir. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:And Dr. Tom asked me to make a couple extra notes as a supplement to this interview. He wanted to make sure that people knew that the suit fetish is gender inclusive. And even though he referenced things like menswear, it's not exclusive to men, it's open to people of all genders, and that with a little bit of searching, you can probably find a gender-inclusive tailor who would be happy to alter a suit regardless of your body or gender identity. So that was just an important message he wanted to make sure all of you had. So I'm adding that to the interview. And now it's time for Ask Edge, the segment where I answer questions from all of you. If you would like to submit a question, you have a couple of options. You can send me an email at ask at fullcow.show. That's ask at fullcow.show, or you can leave me a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash leatheredge. Lth R E D G E. Both of those links and that information available in the show notes. And we have two questions this episode, both of which are anonymous. Now, one of them is anonymous on purpose, because the person who asked it wanted their identity to remain anonymous. The other, I think the question came to me through my Instagram, and so I didn't fully carry over all of the information of who asked it. So it's going to be anonymous, I'm sorry. So our first question, our first anonymous question. It's taken me some time to put my thoughts into words, but I'd like to share a few reflections and questions with you. Please feel free to rephrase or summarize if you decide to include this in your Ask Edge segment. I've always known I have a strong sub preference, but about three to four years ago I began actively exploring it. I was fortunate to meet some great men who introduced me to different aspects of BDSM. They were safe, sensible partners who helped me test my limits, often knowing when to stop before I needed to use a safe word. One in particular understood that what excited me most was knowing he enjoyed inflicting pain as much as I enjoyed receiving it. That dynamic allowed me to feel safe and fulfilled. Sometimes I struggle with accepting my need for pain or a good paddling. Part of me worries it means something is wrong with me, while other times I feel completely at peace with it. I'd love your advice on accepting my masochism and learning to be okay with it long term. I've also realized that for me it only works if the Dom genuinely enjoys it too. When someone uses a paddle or flogger just because I like it, the experience falls flat. I want to know they're turned on by it themselves, not just doing it for me. Is that unusual? Do others struggle with this balance of mutual gratification? Beyond play, I've learned that a Dom sub dynamic is very much a relationship. Looking back, I wish I'd been more aware of this from the start and had clearer conversations about expectations and feelings. I'd appreciate any advice or recommended reading on navigating the emotional side of DS relationships. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hopefully my reflections are useful to others too. I think they are quite useful, Anonymous, so thank you for sharing them. I think one of the core issues I hear you articulating is shame. And of course, shame is such a troubling feeling because guilt says, I did a bad thing. Shame says I'm a bad person. And I think for many of us, we at some point had some degree of shame around one or more of our fetishes. And for some of us, that may keep us and have kept us and will keep us from exploring that fetish, and that's okay. But it's also okay to release the shame, to work through it, so that you can fully embrace who you are and what you're into. Some of that might require really thoughtful reflection. Sometimes the shame isn't about the activity, but it's about a social message or a cultural message we get. But sometimes the pain might or the shame might be bound up with other issues from our childhood or from family of origin. So the first step I find in working through shame is to disentangle what is damaging, if there is anything damaging, and what is a message I've received from out where outside, right? Like I've got to get some clarity on given my own self, my own history, my own journey through life. Is this shame coming from outside me, or is it coming from something in my past? Now the second issue is if you can find a therapist or a counselor who you trust, or anyone who you can trust who can really help you talk through these things, that's a great option. And increasingly these days, AI is a good option for doing that because it feels a little more anonymous than perhaps finding a therapist or a counselor. In the end, like you need to make a decision of whether or not the shame is going to bind you and how it's going to bind you. And it's not an easy journey to release shame. I still have some shame around some of the things I'm into, and I continue to have to negotiate that when those scenes come up, and I have to continue to ask myself, is this in alignment with who I want to be? And generally speaking, the answer is yes, and so I have to continually do that work, and it's worth it because it helps me be truer to who I am and to my desires. The second thing you're articulating here is the role or the intersection of masochism and submission. There are people who are simply pain pigs. They are a uh they have a well-wired endorphin response, and so if you give them pain, they're going to feel really, really, really, really good. And so I think for people who are endorphin pigs or who have that strong endorphin response in general, it's not quite as critical that there is a DS dynamic or that the other person is enjoying it, because it's less about the submission. What you're articulating is that taking pain is not simply something you enjoy, but you enjoy it as an expression of your service and submission to a dominant person. And that, I think, is probably why it's important that you feel they're enjoying it too, because if they're not enjoying it, it's not really a service to them. If they're not enjoying it, it's really selfish. It's about your own pleasure, where your submission wires you to offer pleasure to the dominant. So that's simply a way of saying you have a combo of submission and masochism, which is common, but which isn't the only combination possible. It just happens to be the combination you have. Finally, in terms of recommended reading on the emotional side of DS relationships, I would probably recommend something not so much about DS relationships, but something like Polycule, because many of these relationships are polyamorous, and the thing about polycule is it gives you a lot of good tools for discussing relationships in general, thinking about your attachment style in general, and specifically in the context of polyamory, but I think a lot of that can be translated to the context of dominance and submission. So I think it's a good resource. There are a couple books, maybe, maybe slave craft, but that has a very particular perspective. Beyond that, I'm trying to think if there are a lot of books specifically about the emotional aspect, and I'm not sure there are plenty. I should say there are none that I am distinctly aware of. So I hope that answer gives you some insight, that you do not have to have shame, but it does take work to get through it, that it is perfectly normal, in fact, quite common, to have this alignment of submission and masochism, and that one place to start thinking about the emotional aspects of the DDS relationship is a book like Polycule, which just gives you a lot of really good non-standard relationship language and tools. Hope that helped. Our second question is, hey there, hope you're doing well. As ever, loving your podcast, and think I have an ask-edge question for you. With an Alexander Skarsgard movie with a leather biker SM theme coming out next year, and fingers crossed it's good, I'm struck by just how bad most kinky representation in TV and movies have been. Do you have a favorite mainstream movie or TV show that depicts kink? Or what do you want to see in our c in how our community is represented? This is a great question. You know, my dear friend and mentor Thor for years would do a program for GMSMA in New York, the Gay Male SM Activist Group. He would do a program called uh SM at the Movies, or maybe Kink in the Movies, and it was literally reviewing any movie, every movie. He was quite extensive, uh, that had any reference to Kink Leather BDSM. And the representations are not fantastic. I mean, the one that pops to mind most, the two that circulate somewhere in popular culture is Cruising with Al Pacino, which is a horrible representation and yet got me very aroused when I saw it. And Police Academy and the uh little leather bar in the police academy movies, which people will still reference on my Instagram as though, oh, he's in that bar from Police Academy, whatever. The one show I've seen that I think is a good representation is Bonding on Netflix. And it's a very clever, funny little series about a dominatrix and her best friend and hijinks ensuing. And I remember thinking it was very well balanced, well-informed. It reflected the kind of parts of the community I knew about, and it was just an absolute delight to watch. In terms of how the community should be represented, I mean, it's really hard to accurately represent any community once we transfer into popular culture, because part of what popular culture does is appropriate. What it does is tone things down for a broader market, what it does is sort of misrepresent because it's connecting it to larger tropes of comedy or drama that people already know. In general, it's just really hard to get an accurate representation of community in anything, movie or TV, unless it's a documentary. So honestly, I would I prefer it if our community is kind of left out of that, more or less. I think there's something about the sacredness of the fact that it is semi-hidden that feels very, really quite old guard to me, um, in the classic sense of a very small protected community. And even though we have quite a bit of visibility, I don't know that I want maximum visibility. It's a good question, though, because I think it asks us to become the makers of media instead of just the consumers. It really invites people to think about, well, if you if you had to represent the community, what show would you write? Now go write it, now go make it. And I think that your question ends up being inspirational and aspirational. Certainly, if some of you have a favorite representation of Kink Leather BDSM in various media, I hope you will share it with me. But that's sort of my answer for now. Bonding is the really good one, cruising is the really bad one, that was still kind of hot. And at the end of the day, I would prefer our community to stay out of the spotlight at least a little bit. I hope you that helped, and I hope if any of you have a question, you will think about sending it in, because without you, this segment does not exist. And that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing, or you can send feedback to edge at fullcow.show. As always, may your leather journey be blessed.