While fashion is often touted as an industry with a generally progressive attitude towards sex, scratch the surface and you’ll quickly see that the reality is far more complex. That’s particularly evident when you look at the industry’s relationship with sex work. While on one hand, designers have openly embraced the saying “sex sells” — think: Vivienne Westwood’s punk-era defining boutique, SEX, and Thierry Mugler casting porn star Jeff Stryker way back in 1992 — there’s no shortage of examples of prominent fashion figures having espoused diminishing views of sex workers. Take, for instance, Tyra Banks’ incredibly cringey interview with then 18-year-old porn-megastar Sasha Grey, or the habit of luxury brands co-opting the aesthetics of sex work while overlooking the very people they draw inspiration from.
Indeed, while brands as varied as Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier have referenced cultures long associated with sex work — Gianni Versace’s acclaimed 1992 bondage collection as a case in point — often the industry shies away from directly advocating for sex worker’s rights. Writing of the show at the time, Vogue proclaimed that “these high-maintenance looks were meant to be seen, not in a dungeon somewhere, but on the red carpet”, divorcing the garments from the contexts that inspired their creation. Even today, the real experiences of people in this world are kept at arm’s length, with only a handful of established designers and brands working with individuals with an open history of sex work, such as Blumarine who featured Euphoria star and former porn actress Chloe Cherry in their AW22 show.
Increasingly, sex workers are speaking out against the fact that the way they are represented in fashion is detached from any genuine engagement with what they do, and the issues they face on a daily basis. In fact, many SWers feel that the current state of affairs directly contributes to harmful polemic views, creating a deliberate othering and turning them into caricatures. “Generally sex workers are portrayed one of two ways, as a victim or as a villain,” says Elisabeth Rossi, who has worked intermittently as a stripper since 2004. “It reduces sex workers to a trope, essentially that of a money-hungry femme fatale with questionable morals.”
In the past, designers that have aligned themselves with sex work have done so only when sex work was synonymous with glamour and, vitally, wealth. A salient example being when Yves Saint Laurent designed the wardrobe for Catherine Deneuve’s character Séverine Serizy in the 1967 film Belle de Jour, in which a young woman explores her sexuality by working as a high-end escort, under the nose of her wealthy husband.
Even ostensibly positive references to sex work such as this can be harmful, Elisabeth says, because they tap into false views of what sex work should look like in order to be valid. “Portraying sex workers as living the high life and having a ton of money is also harmful and unrealistic,” she says. “People are a lot less grossed out by sex work when you’re highly paid. People cheer for the whore with multiple designer bags, not the whore just putting food on the table, which is just adding shame to lower income sex workers.”
Public attitudes to sex work seem to be (slowly) shifting in the right direction, in no small part due to awareness campaigns organised by collectives such as SWARM (Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement) and APAG (Adult Peformers and Artists Guild) as well as an increase in legal changes towards sex work worldwide. At the same time, some avenues are opening for a broader explorations of sex, and sex work, within fashion.
Brands that have led the way in this respect include Hood By Air, who collaborated with Pornhub for their SS17 show, as well as releasing a photography book with Pieter Hugo that spotlighted Jamaican gay porn performers. Meanwhile, London-based labels Martine Rose and Jordanluca both cast a number of OnlyFans creators in their respective lookbooks for SS21 and SS22. Paris-based Ludovic de Saint Sernin is another designer with an extensive history of featuring models who are also adult performers, Only Fans creators and sex workers. He has also just released a collaboration with Pornhub — a playful riff on the label’s iconic eyelet thong in the adult streaming service’s emblematic orange and black.
For Ludovic, representation without celebration — and without giving genuine voice and agency to the people he chooses to work with — simply isn’t an option. “It’s important to me, in choosing a model to represent this, that it’s someone who is already within that world,” Ludovic explains. “It’s important for me to show that, if you’re a fashion brand, you’re also a part of a community, and to choose someone who can embody that subject genuinely.”
Ludovic’s work also takes these representations in a different direction creatively. The dark and gritty side of sex is outshone by a lighter and more celebratory mood. “People in the industry are owning up to their own bodies,” he says. “People are not hiding — they’re out there and celebrating sex. I think that’s important and shouldn’t be overlooked.” Ludovic’s models are often personal friends or members of the sex-positive community that he himself is very much a part of. This, he feels, is something that can’t be forced, faked or foisted upon people artificially. “People who are standing up for making sex workers visible — it’s important to do that authentically. It can’t just be a box-ticking exercise.”
“Fashion is art and art can be used to push boundaries and cause people to question previously held beliefs,” says Elisabeth. But there’s only one way to do this truthfully, and in a way that has real impact: “Hire sex workers, pay them and treat them with the respect they deserve. Especially hire Black trans women sex workers — these are the women who are largely responsible for [much of] the amazing fashion everyone wants to copy. These are also the women who have been at the forefront of demanding to be treated as human, who are fighting for bodily autonomy. Everyone who values freedom and wants to be respected owes them.”
Something seems to have changed — or at least, a change feels like it’s coming. Perhaps the meteoric rise of platforms like Only Fans, which have quite literally brought sex work into our homes, are contributing to the destigmatisation of sex work. In tandem, the pandemic has led to a boom in sex-positivity, bringing us to a place where sex isn’t the taboo it once was. Still, kink and BDSM communities remain niche, and relatively few designers have direct relationships with sex workers and people in a position to properly embody explorations of sex work. While there are an increasing number of exceptions, many designers still find themselves looking in from the outside, fuelling an ‘us and them’ narrative that isn’t sitting well with sex workers themselves.