On the Power and Safety That Comes With a Latex Fetish

Latex requires dedication. It starts before it’s even touched your body—in taking precise measurements of your chest, waist and hips to order a latex garment. The measurements have to be precise to ensure comfort. Then you wait, sometimes three or four weeks, for the latex maker to craft your order. Some say that even in the making, it’s unforgiving—make a mistake gluing a seam and you have to start from scratch.

Latex forces you to slow down. There is no way of throwing it on quickly. It needs to be lubed and put on carefully—one careless pull, the tiniest puncture, and it splits. You must take your time, allow it to slowly envelop the curves of the body while you grow accustomed to its embrace.

Everything about it is a balance between a ritual and an inconvenience. It has to be washed by hand in warm water—soaked in the bathtub, or rinsed in the shower, with specks of water gathering on the surface like pearls. After it’s hung to dry, it needs to be powdered and stored out of light. The material has its subtle vulnerabilities: sunlight will make it brittle; metal will stain it; oil will corrode it. The care permeates your life beyond the sexual aspect of fetish, becoming a habitual choreography.

In that confusing time, my body had become the only place I felt safe.

Gradually, a relationship is formed between you and your latex. It’s not only about looking and feeling powerful, other-worldly, and revelling in pleasure. Maybe sometimes you take it off and neglect it for a few days, leaving it in a heap in the corner. But then it is cleansed and laid to rest in the darkness—until it is revived again, alongside that part of you it allows to thrive. For some, those small moments are routine, but for some, they’re a kind of devotion.

For me, latex will always be connected to silence. The silence of a muted video, of a deserted street. I discovered rubber and latex fetish online in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking back at the years before, I remember that I wasn’t happy. I was an assortment of unresolved identities hard to make sense of—queer, immigrant, gender-questioning—and felt chronically anxious. In that confusing time, my body had become the only place I felt safe. Then 2020 came, and there was nothing left but my body. It was strange, claustrophobic—but also quiet and peaceful. It was as if I’d been given a chance to get a little closer to that part of me which felt so comforting and so true, and which I sensed but didn’t yet fully know.

My bedroom window looked out onto a fragment of gleaming sky and a green patch in the middle of an eerily quiet estate. My whole life fitted easily in this room. I walked to the corner shop to get some eggs and held intense eye contact with a person across the road. The yearning for touch was visceral, the tension between the desire for intimacy and personal protection hard to reconcile. Touch was everything, and touch was—suddenly—potentially lethal. After a couple of weeks of confinement, I wanted to unzip my skin and step out of it; having a personality and an intimate history within these four walls felt exhausting, and I wanted to shed myself for something, anything, different.

Perhaps it was that search for something different, for a clean slate, for play, for a different guise I could try on, which had led me to latex imagery online—as well as the fact that I was touch-starved and horny, of course. The bedroom latex experience: a common first time. Having once been a teenage goth and an avid sci-fi fan, I was familiar with a classic latex look: a sleek, black, reflective material which elegantly envelops the body with the grace and flow of a liquid and the precision of armour. In 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded, Monica Bellucci’s character Persephone appears wearing a pearly translucent peplum dress—a latex creation so memorable that it has its own rich online discourse. The imagery which sparked my interest in the material in 2020, however, was a lot more DIY.

As the world turned into a range of lonely bedrooms dotted across the globe, latex flourished in online spaces. On my phone screen, I scrolled through images of people self-styled in rubber: video game streamers, amateur porn stars, nerds, gas mask collectors, burlesque models, latex makers and people like me, who had only just given in to their curiosity. The imagery, which I primarily saw on Instagram, was erotic but not explicit. At times, even the eroticism was incredibly subtle: someone posing demurely in their long latex gloves or a latex dress.

Before I ever wanted to wear latex, I wanted to be seen wearing it.

Online sex work and homemade erotic content saw unprecedented growth during the pandemic, which contributed to the visibility of latex online. But it was also like tapping into a network: you followed one enthusiast, and through them discovered a handful of others, which then would lead you to a fetish photographer and a latex designer—the exposure grew exponentially. People of all genders, from all corners of the world, showed off limbs transformed by glossy rubber skins on their sofas and beds, on balconies overlooking locked-down cities, or in overgrown fields, far away from everything and everyone.

I was hooked on the shiny look and how it accentuated the body, but also on the element of performance in the photos. This self-expression was not confined to one’s regular identity: the material was central to an alternative version of yourself. It facilitated emotion, seduction, disobedience, not giving a fuck, leaving behind whatever else was no longer relevant. I wanted some of that control, some of that agency. Before I ever wanted to wear latex, I wanted to be seen wearing it.

Latex doesn’t really happen to you by accident. To stand in front of the mirror in a catsuit, you need to order that catsuit. And to order the catsuit, you need to arrive at a point where you’re ready to spend £257 on something you can only (mostly) wear in private, just to have a particular experience. Latex demands a lot of care; it also commands a high price. Having a latex fetish is expensive, and this creates a barrier to entry. It also creates a hierarchy of sorts within the scene, limiting one’s exploration with, or immersion in, the material. Some people amass impressive collections, with catsuits of different lustrous colours, bondage gear, ball gowns and immaculately tailored dresses and coats. Some save up and treat themselves occasionally, or shop on reseller sites.

But before that first latex purchase, you don’t even know for sure what the experience will be like. There is no way of knowing, until the moment comes for your body, the rubber and whoever else is in the room with you—until the chemistry takes hold.

The first item I bought was a pair of over-the-elbow gloves. “Opera gloves,” as they insist on calling them on all latex websites. They were black and matte, wrapped in tissue paper and lightly powdered with talcum, a little cool to the touch—they felt and looked very different from anything else I owned. I rubbed the silicone dressing aid on my arms. I pulled the gloves on, and their grip was a whisper. Once on, they transformed from a rubbery substance into a tight, shiny second skin which absorbed my body heat. I transformed too. I didn’t yet fully know what I had transformed into—but I did know that nothing I had worn before had ever felt this way.

While the latex culture is very visually driven, there is a different dimension to the experience which opens up with actually wearing and handling the material. The sensation of wearing latex is shaped by its key property. It’s a non-porous surface, and so it keeps all moisture and fluids on one side, and everything in the surrounding environment on the other. Your body temperature is rising under the thin barrier, causing a subtle sense of what I can only describe as a high. I remember that feeling being almost surprising. I questioned how the feeling of discomfort turned into pleasure.

Not every person who’s ever worn latex feels the same way. I have friends who have latex catsuits but have to bargain with themselves whether the lengthy process of getting into one is worth the gratification. Some love the look but not the sensation. Even the sweat, which pools at one’s feet after taking the catsuit off, or streams down your legs when wearing a latex dress on the dance floor, evokes polarised reactions. “But I love it,” I always say. “Of course,” they reply, “you are a fetishist.”

I felt like I could reach out and touch something buried and viscerally honest—something beneath his conscious self.

After purchasing latex gloves, I kept browsing, deliberating what I could order next, how to nurture this new side of my personality. I ordered black stockings—my legs elongated and shiny in the mirror—and then a skirt. After trying them on, still in the privacy of my bedroom, I grew more and more curious about the sensations. But it was the idea of playing with others and meeting other fetishists that convinced me to order a catsuit. I loved listening to other people describing the sensation of full-coverage rubber, and curiosity took over. It was less about trying on the seductive feminine persona than about trying something entirely different—and sharing that intoxicating first time with someone else.

The first time I put on a catsuit, I was in a hotel room with diagonally slanted windows covered by white, semi-sheer curtains. The decor was neutral and inoffensive. Within the twenty-five square metres, we went slowly: two latex-clad cyborgian beings moving around one another in a careful choreography. I placed my spiked heel on his chest. He traced his tongue over my thigh. I stroke the back of his neck with gloved fingers. We have learnt this pleasure out of curiosity: searching out pornographic visuals to transmute into tactile experience. A closed circuit of erotics and memory. I thought of all the blood and electricity running through his body under the latex. I felt like I could reach out and touch something buried and viscerally honest—something beneath his conscious self.

Wearing a latex catsuit unlocks a new kind of sensory perception. Compressed by the pressure of its rubber shell, I travel to the most remote corners of my skin. I become a thick pulsing vortex. Time slows down, and I feel strangely peaceful. The sleek, smooth exterior clings close to my body, closer than any clothing or any body ever has. I think of how we all chase this closeness. The catsuit draws the boundaries, and inside: so much electricity, oxygen and sweat; my heartbeat pounding, laughter rising; a tingling pleasure; the hum of my blood as it rushes towards the unknown.

Some people are guided by sensory satisfaction: the distinct smell, the cool smooth touch; some by the submissive or dominant states it helps them achieve in a carefully calibrated power play. I’ve been hooked by the potential for endless transformation and emotional catharsis. Rubber allows one to channel a creature devoid of gender or social attributes—it’s a sweet spot where you can escape being perceived as your day-to-day human self. It allows you to delve into anonymity, embody the void and empty the mind.

Latex holds you with steady pressure. It makes you acutely aware of the body—but also helps you to transcend the restlessness and sadness which comes with having flesh, blood and skin. Sometimes, after the pressure is released and the catsuit is at your feet in a sweaty pile, it feels like grief: for all the sensations which one’s body can mediate, for all the future places one won’t be able to enter without the particular high the catsuit facilitates.

Latex is about the push and pull between isolation and protection: the same poles embedded in the experience of a global health crisis. When you’re in latex, you’re safe, as nothing can penetrate its membrane. When you’re in latex, you’re alone, as the sum total of your sensory experience is confined to your body. I love the paradox of my first forays into a latex fetish—to be observing fetishism in private rooms all over the world, yet still yearning to connect and to broadcast my desires and discoveries digitally. There is a continuous interplay of closeness and distance. There is also the tension between individual experience and collective identity—there is fluidity and freedom in what a latex fetish means and what it looks like, and you’re free to stretch and mold your own identity accordingly.

At the same time, connection and culture play a crucial part in this seemingly solitary endeavour, through fragile, temporary connections people build through shared admiration of the rubbery touch. Latex has a recognisable iconography, an endearing surface, yet it is the deeper, sensory experience which nourishes a fetishist’s life.

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From Second Skin by Anastasiia Federova. Published by Catapult. Text copyright © 2026 by Anastasiia Fedorova. All rights reserved.