Slinky, Sexy, Surprising: Anastasiia Fedorova on Kink, Fetish, and Fashion

My journey home from work usually involves me, the Victoria Line, and a book. The train is busy, it’s rush hour, so I jostle through the offloading passengers to find a perfectly placed seat in front of me, unusual compared to the normal hot sardine tin environment of the beloved 6 o’something tube. I take full advantage, sit, and bring out my book. It slips from my bag, a hardback with a glossy matte cover. The image on the front is hard to decipher, but has the undeniable high shine of luminous black latex.

The book is Second Skin by writer, curator, and fetish historian Anastasiia Federova and as it sits in my hands, an unformed black latex figure is face-up before I realize what is being lauded to the unknowing and innocent passengers of the Victoria Line. I quickly flip it over, and remove the cover, before catching myself, and thinking “Why do I care?” Little did I know - that through Fedorova's kinky latex valleys and rough leather hills - her writing, full of surprising humanity and touching lyricism, would teach me not only why I care, but how not to.

‘We have a lot of fun. It's absurd. It's not that serious. It looks serious, it's all people dressed in black, looking cool, but actually, it's so silly.’ Fedorova tells me. She just slipped on a pair of latex gloves. They shine like onyx in the mid-morning light that streams from the skylight above, glossy with the lubricant she used to put them on. Glassy and bright. Her latex top matches the high shine of her gloves which are almost reflective. Our surroundings distorted to the point of being indecipherable, yet uniquely present. The bright yellow tulips on the glass table between us dance liltingly across the slick surface.

‘I mean it's plain and simple. It’s about having sex.’ Fedorova states. ‘I think in each chapter, I just stopped for a bit and thought about, ‘How does this make me feel?’ And how can I write from the body? How can I write from this experience? And reinvent a little bit [of] how we think about writing and seeing sex.’ Fedorova is known for a lot of things, a writer, curator and researcher, she has contributed to many publications such as DAZED, I-D, Vogue, and of course the very platform you’re reading this on right now, where, she previously interviewed erotic jewelry designer Betony Vernon ahead of the release of Vernon's 2022 book Paradise Found: An Erotic Treasury For Sybarites. It was steamy to say the least.

Between 2022 and 2023, she was a part of the team behind HÄN, a contemporary queer archive dedicated to non-conforming creative expression and is the founder of Russian Queer Revolution, which she ran from 2020 until 2021 as a way to support LGBTQ+ creatives from her native homeland. Amongst all of these things, Fedorova is a fetishist, plain and simple. Though, really, not as simple as you might think. ‘I think fetish is by nature very playful, but also very vulnerable. It's quite a vulnerable state if we talk about people's desires, especially desires which are taboo.’ Second Skin bares all, literally, taking you through 12 chapters and 10 distinct fetishes and kinks, using history, art, politics, identity, and her personal experience to redefine what desire, shame, and sexuality means today.

As Fedorova and I speak, the conversation slips between us like lubed up latex. She takes me through her process of writing, noting that the book had really been in process for a couple of years. She previously had a pseudo-blog called Other Kinds of Pleasure from 2021 to 2024, which she used to talk about BDSM, kink and queer culture. So this was not Fedorova's first foray into writing about deviant sexual behavior, it might however, be her most poignant and erudite piece of writing to date, personal opinion.

In one of the book’s not-so-elusively-titled-chapters The Gimp, Fedorova writes ‘We perform the selves which are expected of us’, pertaining to the monotony of everyday life. She follows this by explaining that kink and fetish are a way to subvert and transform the self. To maybe become another thing outside of the humanoid body you inhabit, or even become nothing at all. A blank space.‘You just want to transform yourself into something else, and try to interact with the world differently’, she says, her gloves still shining slickly from within. My mind whirs, is this not the very reason we have fashion, art, and a myriad of other creative practices - to transform ourselves and the environments around us? To interact differently? If only for a few minutes? Are the deviant desires of the multiplicitous kink and fetish communities maybe the truest expression of art?

Along this line, Fedorova has been a part of the fashion and art world since she came to london and so naturally, her book is full to the brim with references and conversations with artists and designers alike who use kink and fetish to explore their relationship with sex, identity, and the world around them, many of whom are also part of the same world Fedorova speaks of. Fedorova mentions Madonna's iconic Steven Meisel photo book Sex and Balenciaga's stock market X gimp mask S/S 23 show. She realised that she had been seeing these kinky references exist in the creative world for some while. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to unite the two; creativity and kink?

‘I'm so interested in how the aesthetics and the practice actually exist quite differently and exist quite separately. How in the public imagination, a lot of things still remain taboo or they remain a little bit misunderstood’ Fedorova notes as we chat about the subculture of kink and fetish VS. the use of it as a reference in fashion and art. She continues: ‘So I was just thinking I really want to write a book which combines the two, which tells the story in a way which would be compelling for people inside the community, but also for people who might just be exploring.’

Her expertise lies in her personal experiences and her depth of historical fetish knowledge. ‘Part of it was just kind of unearthing that history which I learned as part of my exploration and showing how it's important to remember these things. How a material can be [a] conduit for shared community experiences and feelings, like grief, protest and connection, sex and everything.’

Everything? I began to think, “is kink everywhere?” When we think of kink and fetish, we consider it distinctly sexual and yet have this notion that it's completely separate from everyday life, but is sex not a part of everyday life? Are we not fetishising and objectifying everyday objects through the lens of capitalism, at the tap of our Apple Pay? These are some of the questions Fedorova seeks to answer, and does, through her candorous and intimate portraiture of the community. Fedorova explains,‘I think it's a great way to try and understand what humans [are] actually about and what we want in [a] sexual neurotic sense? What do we want in the cultural sense? I think fetish and kink is a type of storytelling. To me, it's a way to create a fantasy, create a story which you can embody with other people.’

As I read through this book, on and off the tube, I come to an understanding. No, this isn't my coming out story. But this is my awakening. Fedorova is able to really make me, as a reader, understand that sex is fun. Play is fun. Kink is fun. As she said in the beginning, ‘It's absurd. It's not that serious.’ The majority of my life as a young gay man, has been centered around shame-centric mantras and ideologies. So, what if instead of trying to take the shame out of sex, you confront it? Put on a full leather daddy outfit. Become the dominatrix of your dreams, full latex catsuit included. Make that shame your bitch.

I’m not saying I'm prepared to take the leap into a full catsuit anytime soon, but I am willing to confront my preconceived notions around sex, identity and our bodies. Through chapters which detail leather, gimp masks, latex, chasers, and even monsters and cars, I began to realise how simple and commonplace kinks are. We strive to ascribe, thanks to the cultural imprint of Freudian psychoanalysis, fetish and kink to trauma or some sort of mis-wiring in the brain. But what if it is simply just a like and dislike, a need to be seen while not being known, to be in the moment with whatever it is you have the want for and someone else to control or listen to? As Fedorova writes in her chapter The Chaser, ‘fetishism exposes the power of sexuality to both elevate and dehumanise, praise and degrade, connect with someone and erase them.’ So, what would you do with the power to endorse someone else’s need and want, while enacting your own? Sounds simple doesn’t it?

I find that through Fedorova's writing, I'm left with open-ended questions. Which is maybe what this is all about. Surely the job of writers and journalists is to probe rather than answer, right? The latter of which varies wildly depending on who is consuming the book - the narratives and biases they want to confront. What answers can we find when our thoughts, ideologies, and bodies are so different from each other? What Fedorova does tell us, though, is that as much as fetish is a way to have fun with yourself and others, it's also a way to totally forget who and what you are. Or even become something new. ‘When you put on a fetish garment, you almost become something else, you transform into a different erotic entity. You have a chance to embody your fantasy’. I can seldom think of anything more rare and beautiful than that.