Erotica 07: Women dominate the annual lifestyle fair - November 24, 2007
If it wasn't for her see-through black fishnet top, miniskirt and boots, Margaret, taking an afternoon coffee with her husband of 25 years, Rowan, could have been in any tea shoppe in her home town in Sussex, instead of at Erotica 07, the annual exhibition for fetishists, swingers and fantasists at Olympia in west London.
Eyes straying to the thigh boots and PVC outfits on the stall across the way from the coffee stand, Rowan said confidentially: "We like dressing up erotic-like at home, but it's not the sort of thing you could wear out in the street."
If you stray into west London this weekend you may see many such couples - portly middle-aged men in sensible windcheaters, anoraks and leather trousers, plump middle-aged women in very short skirts and very high boots, their bosoms cantilevered upwards at full elevation. They'll probably be holding hands, chastely.
Erotica, going now for 10 years, claims to be the world's largest lifestyle show "for freethinking adults who are comfortable with their sexuality".
Last year they had 82,000 visitors in three days, 60% of them women.
"We've got a bigger footfall than the Ideal Home Exhibition," said Sam Espensen, handling the show's PR. "We're selling stuff you don't find on your high street. Attitudes are changing and people are spending more on their sex lives. We did a survey and 52% of 18- to 24-year-olds spend £25 or less a year, mainly on condoms, whereas the over-55s - well, that's a £1bn market.
"The average person coming here spends £250: it's almost like a Christmas treat to themselves. You come here and you've got your burlesques and your performance artists and your sex toys and your hardcore DVDs - something for everyone."
Indeed there is: extreme footwear, bondage tape and lubricants, fetish whips from Russia, the Pocket Rocket remote control vibrator, the Monkey Spanker, even marshmallow willies selling at £2 each.
One thigh-boot salesman was explaining earnestly to a customer: "We go to size 16 in all our shoes."
And there are seminars: sessions on erotic sensual play, pain and pleasure and the UK fetish scene, plus masterclasses in sex toys: "know how to choose them, how to use them."
And shows. The star this year is a burlesque performer called Dita Von Teese - which may not be her real name - who used to be married to the rocker Marilyn Manson. Dita doesn't perform in public very often, but she's doing three appearances a day this weekend. She was half an hour late for her press call - the lighting, or the photographer was not right, or something - and then emerged in a grey fur wrap, silver spangly dress, stockings as wrinkled as Norah Batty's, her face white, her lips red and her eyes enigmatic, bored and expressionless. She struck one pose and then another and then marched off, throwing a glance over her shoulder.
"It's very expensive but you have to be here," said Stuart Inglis, director of Adult World, which has seven shops stretching from London to Rhyl. "Twenty-five years ago when we started it used to be all middle-aged businessmen, but now its 50/50 women and men.
"Our Naughty Janet saucy range goes very well and so does the Sex Rabbit. You see, these days it's all boxed up, looking very stylish."
Maybe it was the sunlight streaming in through the ironwork tracery of Olympia, shining on the sex aids and rubber nurses' costumes - Walter Bagehot said you shouldn't let sunshine in on magic, though he was thinking of Queen Victoria - but Erotica 07 was about as exciting as cold blancmange. The organisers had laid on a special foreplay session masterclass for the press, but, in time-honoured fashion, the Guardian made its excuses and left.
Source - The Guardian