Fetish Through the Decades: How the Twentieth Century Shaped Modern Fetish Culture
- Jul 27
- 6 min read
The history of fetish culture cannot be understood as the history of sexuality alone. It is equally a history of design, photography, cinema, publishing, fashion, politics, technology, and changing attitudes toward the body.
Every generation inherited visual symbols from the previous one while creating entirely new ways of expressing identity, intimacy, and desire. Objects changed, materials evolved, communities became visible, and the spaces where fetish culture existed shifted from hidden private rooms to global digital networks.
Looking back across the last hundred years reveals that fetish culture has never been static. The leather jacket, the corset, the gas mask, the latex catsuit, the dungeon, the underground club, the internet forum, and the social media feed all belong to different historical moments, each shaped by its own cultural, technological, and political circumstances.
Understanding fetish through the decades is therefore less about tracing isolated practices than about following the evolution of visual culture itself. Photography, film, architecture, industrial design, fashion, and digital media have all contributed to the visual language that defines fetish today.
The 1920s: Modernity, Liberation and the Birth of New Aesthetics
The decades following the First World War transformed European society. Cities expanded rapidly, industrial production accelerated, women challenged traditional social roles, and nightlife flourished in cultural capitals such as Berlin and Paris.
Alongside these broader changes, fetish aesthetics began to emerge within avant-garde art, cabaret performance, photography, and experimental fashion.
Corsets gradually shifted from everyday garments toward symbols of transformation rather than obligation, while leather gloves, polished boots, tailored uniforms, and theatrical costumes appeared increasingly in photography and performance. Berlin's Weimar nightlife became particularly influential, creating environments where gender expression, homosexuality, cross-dressing, and sexual experimentation could coexist within a remarkably progressive urban culture.
Although much of this visual world would later be suppressed by political upheaval, the foundations of modern fetish aesthetics had already begun to take shape.
The 1950s: Irving Klaw, Bettie Page and the Birth of Visual Fetish Culture
The postwar years witnessed one of the most important developments in the history of fetish imagery. While censorship remained strict throughout much of Europe and North America, photographers, illustrators, and independent publishers began creating underground visual networks that circulated through mail-order catalogues and specialized publications.
No figure became more influential than Irving Klaw, whose photographs of Bettie Page introduced millions of people to imagery centered around bondage, corsets, high heels, leather accessories, masks, and role-playing. At the same time, illustrator John Willie published Bizarre magazine, establishing an elegant visual vocabulary that combined fashion illustration with fetish fantasy.
These images rarely relied on explicit nudity. Instead, they demonstrated that clothing, posture, objects, and atmosphere could become as psychologically compelling as the body itself. Modern fetish photography was born during this period.
The 1960s: Sexual Liberation and Underground Publishing
The cultural revolutions of the 1960s fundamentally altered public conversations surrounding sexuality, censorship, gender, and artistic expression. Independent publishing expanded rapidly, underground magazines flourished, and experimental cinema began exploring themes previously considered unacceptable.
Films such as Belle de Jour (1967) and Venus in Furs (1967) approached fetish not as exploitation but as psychology, imagination, and social critique. Fashion simultaneously embraced leather, vinyl, military tailoring, and futuristic materials inspired by the Space Age, allowing fetish aesthetics to begin entering mainstream visual culture.
Photography also evolved dramatically during this decade, with artists increasingly documenting underground communities whose visual languages would influence generations of photographers and designers.
The 1970s: Leather Culture Finds Visibility
Few decades proved more influential for contemporary fetish culture than the 1970s. Following the gay liberation movement, leather communities became increasingly visible in cities including San Francisco, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Leather bars, motorcycle clubs, private organizations, and BDSM communities established permanent spaces where clothing, architecture, music, and ritual combined into coherent cultural identities.
Cinema reflected these developments through films such as The Night Porter (1974), Maîtresse (1976), and later Cruising (1980), while photographers including Robert Mapplethorpe documented leather culture with a visual sophistication that permanently changed its relationship with contemporary art.
This period also witnessed the emergence of dedicated BDSM furniture, custom leather craftsmanship, dungeon design, and specialized equipment, transforming fetish culture from scattered private practices into visible communities with their own material culture.
The 1980s: Fashion Discovers Fetish
During the 1980s, fetish aesthetics increasingly entered high fashion. Designers including Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Thierry Mugler borrowed visual languages from underground communities, introducing corsetry, leather, latex-inspired silhouettes, harnesses, exaggerated shoulders, and military references to international runways.
Photography became increasingly theatrical, while music videos embraced fetish imagery as part of broader explorations of power, glamour, and performance. Artists such as Madonna helped popularize visual codes previously confined to underground subcultures, transforming corsets, leather gloves, stockings, and harnesses into internationally recognizable fashion symbols.
This movement fundamentally altered public perception, demonstrating that fetish aesthetics could exist within luxury fashion without abandoning their symbolic complexity.
The 1990s: Technology, Cinema and Industrial Aesthetics
The final decade of the twentieth century expanded fetish culture through cinema, industrial music, club culture, and the earliest forms of digital communication. Latex, PVC, cyber aesthetics, gas masks, industrial architecture, and mechanical imagery became closely associated with alternative fashion and nightlife.
David Cronenberg's Crash (1996) reimagined fetish through automobiles, technology, and industrial design, while Ryū Murakami's Tokyo Decadence (1992) explored Japanese BDSM aesthetics through minimalist interiors and urban alienation.
Simultaneously, Berlin's rapidly evolving club scene transformed abandoned industrial buildings into cultural laboratories where architecture, music, fashion, and fetish merged into entirely new visual environments.
The 2000s: The Internet Creates Global Communities
The arrival of the internet permanently transformed fetish culture. Communities that had once depended upon local clubs, magazines, bookstores, or private organizations suddenly gained access to global networks where information, photography, literature, education, and discussion could circulate instantly.
Dedicated forums, independent websites, digital archives, and online retailers democratized access to knowledge that had previously been difficult to obtain. Niche interests developed their own communities, while artists, photographers, designers, and researchers gained unprecedented opportunities to share their work internationally.
Rather than replacing physical communities, the internet expanded them, connecting individuals across countries and cultures while preserving visual histories that might otherwise have disappeared.
The 2010s: Social Media and the Democratization of Visibility
Social media transformed the production and circulation of fetish imagery once again. Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, and later TikTok each influenced how fetish aesthetics entered mainstream visual culture. Fashion photography, editorial design, performance art, cosplay, queer identity, and alternative fashion increasingly shared visual references once limited to underground scenes.
At the same time, creators gained direct control over their own representation. Models, photographers, educators, craftspeople, latex designers, leather artisans, and independent publishers no longer depended entirely upon traditional media institutions. Visual culture became decentralized, allowing communities to document themselves with unprecedented freedom.
This increased visibility also generated important discussions surrounding censorship, algorithmic moderation, consent, intellectual property, and the commercial platforms through which contemporary fetish culture now circulates.
Contemporary fetish culture occupies an entirely different position than it did one hundred years ago. Museums exhibit bondage photography, universities study BDSM communities, fashion designers openly reference latex and leather, architects design luxury dungeons, and independent publishers document fetish history as part of broader conversations surrounding visual culture.
Rather than existing outside society, fetish aesthetics have become deeply intertwined with industrial design, architecture, photography, cinema, publishing, performance, and contemporary art. The visual language developed across decades of underground experimentation now influences luxury fashion campaigns, editorial photography, music videos, gallery exhibitions, and digital culture worldwide.
Yet despite this increasing visibility, the essential characteristic of fetish culture remains unchanged. Every generation continues to reinterpret objects, materials, clothing, and spaces, creating new meanings while preserving connections to the communities that first transformed them.
A Century of Visual Transformation
Looking across the last hundred years reveals that fetish culture has never followed a straight line. It has responded continuously to technological innovation, political change, artistic movements, industrial production, and evolving ideas about identity and freedom. What began as scattered visual experiments within photography, fashion, and underground publishing gradually developed into one of the most influential aesthetic languages of contemporary culture.
Understanding fetish through the decades therefore means understanding how societies assign meaning to objects, materials, images, and bodies. The history of fetish is ultimately a history of visual transformation, demonstrating that design, cinema, architecture, photography, and technology have always shaped the ways human beings imagine intimacy, identity, and desire.
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Written by Otávio Santiago
Founder of Atomique Fetish, an editorial platform exploring fetish design, culture & visual research.
Visual research continues at @atomique.fetish ↗
