There was a time when people whose erotic rituals ran to whips and chains and latex and highly complex protocols of dominance and submission were confined to the cultural shadows. But that was before Madonna turned bondage into a concert party trick, before the Gap ran ads with a tongue-in-cheek S-M tagline ("Everybody in leather!"), before Altoids and Svedka vodka purloined imagery from "Venus in Furs" for their ad campaigns and well before Victoria's Secret mainstreamed the bondage pinup queen Bettie Page.
Eric Johnson for The New York Times
The Folsom Street East street fair was a showcase for the leather fetish look.