What if Kate Spade designed a dungeon?

I was shopping for a wallet the other day. I'm one of those people who consider gray a color and the majority of my wardrobe is black with the occasional splash of color and that color is usually red. However, these days I keep leaning towards yellow. Bright, blinding, sunshiny yellow.

Cute right? I think my subconscious is rebelling against the overwhelming use of black and red in all things sexy and kinky. One of the reasons why I started blogging about this stuff was because I was frustrated with the seemingly limited visual vocabulary used in dungeons, clothes, websites, book covers... anything related to BDSM. If it was kinky, it was in black and red. I get it completely, both colors signify an after-hours sultriness. Black is sexy and dangerous, the color of leather. Red is bold and visceral, the color of blood.



Color is a tool for communication and one important aspect of branding is being able to "own" a color: Hermés orange, UPS brown, Tiffany blue. Halloween has orange and black. Christmas owns green and red. Sex seems to be red and black. But is that it? Is there room for a color palette that represents the vast spectrum that is human sexuality? The hanky code is a great example but seems to be limited to the bandana in the back pocket. I'm not personally into Littles, but at least they wear bright colors!

I always find it interesting that in most clubs if you are not in fetish wear the minimum requirement is to be in all black. What if my fetish is for tweedy English professors or jockeys? I've had this vision in my head of a dungeon that was on the top floor of a building, with huge floor to ceiling windows with sunlight streaming in and billowy white curtains flowing through open windows, and all my play parties would be on a Sunday afternoon, after brunch, and there would be Kir Royals and fresh flowers... but I digress.

Is someone wearing all pink automatically assumed to be channeling a little girl? Would a sadistic dominant wearing all bright green seem as authoritarian?

Writer Sarah Vowell told a story on This American Life about getting a "goth makeover". Part of the process was choosing a "goth name". Vowell chose Becky. Her stylists said that she had transitioned so past the obvious and went right into the heart of darkness. They called this being "in the pink".

I was once at a kink event and walking around the dungeon was a young man dressed completely in white. He seemed so much more transgressive and subversive than everyone around him. I also bet he could find his clothes in the dark faster than anyone else.