Latex, Cuffs and Extra-Large Pumps: A Glimpse in the Kink Shop Outfitting Pride Parties

This story is part of Summer & THE CITY, our weekly newsletter made to help you enjoy — and survive — the hottest time in the five boroughs. Sign up here .

In June, themed parties bring a lot of people to Purple Passion.

A big latex-only bash is one highlight of Pride Month, said Lolita Wolf, who manages the Chelsea fetishwear and gear retailer. The night after that, the theme is “a torture garden party that has a strict dress code,” she said. The mid-June kink and fetish street festival, Folsom Street East, also brings in customers.

Pride Month means brisk sales for the 32-year-old fetish shop on West 20th Street. But its business isn’t only seasonal.

“There’s parties all year,” Wolf said. “And drag queens perform all year round.”

Those particular patrons go looking for breast plates, padding and specialty gaff underwear to tuck “their stuff,” Wolf said. Santos J. Arce, a shop staffer, demonstrated some of the shop’s most popular items with performers: silicone breasts and bras that accommodate them, in a huge array of sizes.

“Performers and transwomen — or just people who want them — will buy those,” he said.

Also popular are the shop’s dizzying array of shoes, laid out in a sleek basement showroom stacked floor to ceiling with boots, pumps, platforms and can’t-actually-be-worn fantasy shoes in sizes up to a men’s 16.

“Somebody called these ‘rabbit ears.’ You couldn’t walk, really,” said Arce, pointing to a pair of shiny leather lace up boots with toes so radically pointed they ran parallel almost to the shoe’s towering stiletto heel. “We’re not allowed to let people stand in those. I had a ballet dancer come in here and say ‘I insist, I’m a ballet dancer.’ And then she couldn’t stand.”

The shop also does custom leatherwork from a tiny workshop right on the retail floor — creating and modifying things like collars, cuffs and accessories, said Arce, who sported bright yellow suspenders and a hip pouch he fashioned himself.

The business is in its fourth decade, starting in the apartment of its owners, Hilton Flax, in 1992 and moving to its first Chelsea location in 1995. It moved and merged with a gay leather fetish store, DV8, in 2001.

“DV8 catered mostly to men and Purple Passion catered mostly to women. Now we really cater to everybody. We’re very trans-aware and trans-inclusive. It’s all kinds of people,” said Wolf.

Arce is an educator for customers, and beyond. The longtime Bushwick resident hosts a podcast called Kink Punx that aims to provide ethical and “kink aware” sex education for “trans masculine and adjacent people,” he said.

Wolf has been with Purple Passion for more than a decade, working her way from being a kinky customer, then a one-day-a-week employee and now manager, helping to supply the shop’s huge array of apparel, accessories and toys. After all those years, the Upper West Sider can easily spot a first-timer.

“Our attitude is, everybody started somewhere. We’re not very aggressive,” she said. “I learned how to deal with beginners. Me, personally, I would never buy the cheap-o $10 handcuffs. I have the real deal! But sometimes, that’s what’s right for people — furry handcuffs.”

Many knowledgeable customers come in, too, especially those who have heard about the shop from their own leather, kink or fetish communities.

“We get people from all over the country,” she said.

In June, “we get a lot more out-of-towners, and we get a lot that come in for Pride.” The only other time of the year that’s busier for the shop: Halloween.

“They want to dress kinky, but they can’t. Halloween gives them that excuse — plausible deniability — because they can dress up the way they fantasize,” she said.

THE CITY is a nonprofit newsroom that serves the people of New York. Sign up for our SCOOP newsletter and get exclusive stories, helpful tips, a guide to low-cost events, and everything you need to know to be a well-informed New Yorker. DONATE to THE CITY

The post Latex, Cuffs and Extra-Large Pumps: A Glimpse in the Kink Shop Outfitting Pride Parties appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News .