X-Rated

Back in the '70s when punk was a social force and barriers were still meant to be broken down, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's design collaboration and their shop Sex were legendary feats of fashion provocation. Over the years their S&M pants have taken the high streets by storm, and now the pair's sloganeering and x-rated t-shirts are influencing a much wider audience. Not only are Westwood tees being dug out and reproduced in unlicensed copies (the two Tom of Finland-type models exposing their members is the most commonly sighted style), now a major lineup of fashion provocateurs is slapping pornographic slogans and images onto everything.

After FCUK's landmark presence in the last few years and the launch of several fashion meets porn publications (Richardson, Butt Magazine), it seems we had all become a tad bored by the overt use of sexual imagery to sell clothes. Then, whoops! Janet Jackson's nipple pops out on TV and the world goes prudish and moral, so you know that now is the time to invest in a cock-printed (as in the organ) item of clothing from Ziad Ghanem. The Lebanese-born, London-based designer has in the past designed collections with names like "Support Your Local Hooker" and "Vive La Masturbation;" the latter included the sweet slogan "I am a Wanker." Ken Courtney's Just Another Rich Kid line of naughty t-shirts extolling "I f*cked... "(fill in a celebrity) is capturing the hearts of the screw-and-tell hipsters in Stockholm and Tokyo. Pleasure Principle's website tends to feature the sort of trussed-up and gagged souls that are printed on its wildly popular tees. Perenially sex-tinged Venus, Patricia Field's SoHo (NYC) store, is selling porno printed dresses sourced from street vendors in São Paolo, and they're also producing Pat Fields branded t-shirts silk screened with the phonebooth ads of London hookers. Edgy labels like Munich's F*ck You All and Stockholm's Burfitt are all exploring human sexuality in the non-cerebral sense, with both brands depicting a sort of illustrative porno narrative on their t-shirts.

And if there's any doubt about the porn parade in fashion, take a gander at the West Coast Vivid Video-inspired Marciano campaign starring Paris Hilton, and check out Dsquared's current ads featuring a tattered looking Naomi Campbell in all kinds of sexually subversive poses. Clearly consumers are lapping the stuff up (metaphorically speaking).
-Karl Treacy
Burfitt t-shirts

Photos: Porno at Patricia Fields