The Shape Of It (Part 1) (Patreon)

On the costuming side of things, a clear division was emerging in terms of who could help me accomplish what: if I was going with a true-to-the-1920s feathered showgirl walk-out costume, I needed the help of Montréal costume designer Michael Slack (and his impressive network of industry professionals); for everything else, I needed latex extraordinaire Marika Kutnahorsky.

Marika is the head boss lady of Kink Engineering (her company is also known by it’s less polite-society-cringe-inducing name, ‘Elastica Engineering’, for big-budget film costume orders). She participated in the labour of love that was designing the VACUUM apparatus and was one of its most excited cheerleaders (that support extended to her ordering five copies of SLOW CIRCUS, to boot).

Over the course of a couple virtual meetings and an (!!!) in-person meeting on her front porch at the end of July, Marika and I fleshed out the possibilities and impossibilities of the latex elements of the costume. I brought her up to speed on what I knew from the Zurich producer (namely: just that he wanted latex, and not much else on the details-front) and explained the broad strokes of my act idea to her.

Latex is a weird world to be playing in, to begin with, if the costume pieces are being treated as elements of a burlesque-y kind of act. It takes a long time to get on (usually with the help of ample baby powder, and even a dresser), and it takes a long time to take off (carefully peeling off this soaked garment that is now dripping sweat everywhere because it doesn’t breathe). Latex looks beautiful while it’s on your body; it rarely is quite so attractive in the dressing or undressing department.
We came to the conclusion that using the latex catsuit that she had to draft for me for that TV gig back in June was a poor option for this solo act : how would we hide the layers underneath if the first latex layer is skin tight? How do we get it off without literally peeling it off and making a mess or damaging it?

Marika had a brain-wave late one Monday night: “Ess – what about harem pants.”

I pulled together reference photos from 1920s acrobats, looking at the decorations and cuts of the costumes, the different styles of harem pants that had begun to creep into wider use during the Edwardian era. I took a closer look at some of the Barbette photos in the May Ray series: her high wire outfit, upon closer inspection, actually seemed like it was one of the more elaborate styles of ‘skirted’ harem pants, with very frilly legs to give the illusion of a full(er) skirt while up on the wire.

The more I thought on it, the more I liked it.

It already felt like a bit of an odd progression to come out in this fabulous showgirl recreation costume and then – surprise! – reveal what could only come across as a rather dominatrix-y looking outfit beneath. I was open to it initially purely on the premise that whoever the Zurich producer was, he liked latex, and the VACUUM act is inherently fetish-adjacent. But there was no point in staying firmly fixed to a costume idea that didn’t serve the ultimate goals of the act: to be able to perform some beautiful contortion while wearing it, and for the biggest trick of them all, at the end, to be one of presentation (aka, a kind of gender reveal) rather than one of fancy technique (like, say, mouthpiece – which my post-nerve-injury body will not be able to have ready in time to incorporate into this act).

Yes, I liked this harem-pant idea a lot.

Now, we’d found our way into a version of this Barbette idea that felt true to the original aesthetic of the piece while still having a contemporary update with the latex under-costuming. It was still latex (an unusual aesthetic that the producer will still hopefully like even thought it’s not ‘harnesses and chains’ style latex/fetish) and it was still going to be oddly gender-bendy (just like the VACUUM  act is).

We'd found a way forward.

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[to be continued]