By TINA WILSON
I hope to come back in my next life as a movie critic AND a costume designer. I see lots of films; mainstream films, art house films and I attend film festivals. I love the escape and I love the visual stimulation that comes with a great film. I often imagine while watching a movie how I would dress a particular character better than the actual designer on the set. So when I set out to write this blog I wanted to bond intimate apparel and film. What better way than bondage and S&M? Bordelle was the obvious choice.
Bordelle’s bondage inspired underpinnings defy conventional construction and they defy conventional attitudes on bondage. The beauty of what they create takes it well beyond the original intent and into the mainstream and yet remains true to the brand and true to the customers who embrace bondage. The term luxury bondage did not exist before Bordelle. Most of us have these images of vulgar cheap plastic straps sadly attached to some undergarment and hanging in a window of a store you don’t want to be seen walking into or out of. Erase that image when you think of Bordelle. I have been fortunate enough to these works of art up close and they are stunning.
Tie Me Up Tie Me Down is movie I have seen a half dozen times, I have mentioned it in my blog at least twice in the past. See it and see anything by Pedro Almodovar, a young Antonio Banderas is worth the price of admission. Another all- time favorite is 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke when he was hot, and Kim Basinger before the Alec Baldwin drama. They begin an affair and what starts out as playful sex games begins to get a bit complicated. The critics were not kind, but I loved it. And then there is Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, a movie that probably would not get made now during the #Meetoo movement. It’s somewhat of a comedy about a boss and his secretary and her complete and utter submission to him. All three of these films are somewhat light and “soft core” and I can imagine Maggie or Kim wearing something from the Bubble Ouvert Collection. This collection is playful, slightly naïve and fun.
One of the best foreign films that touches on this subject is Belle Du Jour by Luis Bunuel. It stars a gorgeous Catherine Deneuve as a housewife who moonlights as a high class prostitute. She would definitely wear the Square Lace Collection, its slightly more modest than the other collections and is less about bondage and more about being beautiful. It’s perfect for the bride as it also comes in Ivory.
For the more hardcore film fans I might suggest The Night Porter, it’s a cult classic and a bit hard to watch and not because of the sex; or Crash, a psychological thriller directed by David Cronenberg and again starring James Spader…. hmmm, I wonder what that’s all about? It’s about an underground subculture of people who are sexually aroused by crashing their cars…it’s better than it sounds. I might style one of these movies with the Orbit Collection. The pieces in this collection strike me as a bit harder core but they are not sinister like moments in some of these movies. The world of bondage and S&M tends to get painted with a broad brush of negativity in films, which is unfortunate. You’re probably wondering why I don’t mention Fifty Shades of Grey? It’s because I’ve never seen any of them, the trailers reduce me to hysterical laughter so I have spared myself, perhaps they are good movies, but I will never know.
