Pakistani Fetish Business

[00Syd]

My jaw was on the floor the entirety of this video. Really worth a watch.

Two Pakistani brothers have a 1 million dollar a year underground business creating fetish and bondage wear and selling it to western customers. The majority of their employers don't seem to even understand the purpose of the garments they are making.

Check it:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/27/world/1194839708301/a-pakistani-underworld.html?emc=eta1

 

[WriterDom]

My jaw was on the floor the entirety of this video. Really worth a watch.

Two Pakistani brothers have a 1 million dollar a year underground business creating fetish and bondage wear and selling it to western customers. The majority of their employers don't seem to even understand the purpose of the garments they are making.

Check it:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/27/world/1194839708301/a-pakistani-underworld.html?emc=eta1

That was cool.

 

[myinnerslut]

that was really cool. wow.

i wonder if the workers would feel betrayed if they found out what they were actually making.

 

[Netzach]

If they pay above average and hire mainly more secular people no one will care much.

Awesome story. I love the designer at the end bit.

 

[graceanne]

If that one guy who makes the swings ever comes to America he is going to be SO shocked when no one is in leather studded chairs.

 

[Etoile]

Wow, that was freaking cool. I can't imagine their employees are so ignorant about ALL the products as the one guy with the "beach chair" though.

 

[graceanne]

Wow, that was freaking cool. I can't imagine their employees are so ignorant about ALL the products as the one guy with the "beach chair" though.

Honestly, there's probably some deliberate ignorance. They don't have to admit they're making fetish products, if they don't know they're making fetish products, so they don't know they're making fetish products.

Really, Mom. I make chairs for those weird Americans. You know how Americans are.

 

[gypsy*seer]

My jaw was on the floor the entirety of this video. Really worth a watch.

Two Pakistani brothers have a 1 million dollar a year underground business creating fetish and bondage wear and selling it to western customers. The majority of their employers don't seem to even understand the purpose of the garments they are making.

Check it:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/27/world/1194839708301/a-pakistani-underworld.html?emc=eta1

How do I get some of those gorgeous corsets?

Seriously....beach chairs?

 

[Shankara20]

70% of their customers are Democrats. Who do they know that?

"Ok, will there be anything else?
Cash, check credit card?
Paper or plastic?
Zip code?
Democrat or Republican?"

 

[Homburg]

70% of their customers are Democrats. Who do they know that?

"Ok, will there be anything else?
Cash, check credit card?
Paper or plastic?
Zip code?
Democrat or Republican?"

Republicans don't buy fetish gear from Ay-rab turr'rists.

 

[JMohegan]

There are legitimate human rights issues warranting a boycott of Pakistani products.

However, this company does seem progressive. The presence of a female sales executive is a very good sign.

 

[Shankara20]

Republicans don't buy fetish gear from Ay-rab turr'rists.

This from San Francisco in 1994 - I have been a Stormy Leather shopper for years and remember the hub-bub very well. The last line of the story informs my believe system.

Buried amid staid law firm announcements and crisply worded court notices in one of San Francisco's legal newspapers was a recent ad featuring a photo of a smiling, young black model wearing a leather bra and collar.

``STORMY LEATHER,'' read the ad in the Feb 7th edition of the Recorder. ``San Francisco's premier erotic boutique.''

Was it a stroke of marketing genius, as the store's owners believe? Or was it unbelievably offensive, as some lawyers wrote in to say? Or was it a simple First Amendment issue, as the paper's publisher has tried to explain?

The ad has generated more controversy than any other issue to hit the paper during the current publisher's 2 1/2 year tenure; more than a dozen letters, a slew of phone calls and several cancelled subscriptions. And letters -- both in protest and in support -- are still coming in.

``The fact that the ad strikes some as racist or sexist does not mean that it is racist and sexist,'' wrote Peter Scheer, the Recorder's editor and publisher, in response to letters of complaint Scheer, 42, said he hesitated a moment before approving the ad but felt reluctant to censor it.

``We're getting into very murky PC (politically correct) grounds, which is why I am on the side of tolerating images and opinions that may be offensive to some,'' Scheer said.

``This is San Francisco, after all. As you drive down the street you're exposed to more sexually explicit images than in most cities in the world.''

Readers have been deeply divided over the issue.

``I was shocked,'' said Kathleen McQuade, 43, a staff attorney at Solano County Superior Court who said she plans to cancel her $525 annual subscription. ``Women attorney's are still trying to gain respect in this profession and we feel like we've been slapped in the face.''

Not so, says Alissa Friedman, 32, and Oakland attorney who regards herself as a feminist and wrote in to defend the ad. ``This isn't using a woman's body to sell a car,'' Friedman said. ``She's wearing something the store actually sells. I think you have to draw a distinction between an image that shows a woman as a sex object and one that shows a woman in an erotic context.''

The store owners have been both pleased and chagrined by the response. The ad generated more new business for the store -- mainly from female attorneys -- than any other ad the boutique has placed, according to store manager Jenne Blade.

Tucked away in an industrial area South of Market not far from the Civic Center complex, which includes city hall and state and federal courts, Stormy Leather sells expensive latex and fetish wear for women. [Not to mention the Klutz Book of Knots -Z]

``We're a clean well-lighted store owned and run by women for women,'' Blade said. ``We're not some grungy hole-in-the-wall bookstore
run by the Mafia.''

Still, Stormy Leather has decided to tone down future ads in
the Recorder.

As for why the tiny boutique decided to place an ad in the legal newspaper in the first place, Blade offered this explanation:``All the major surveys show that of all the people into the S&M and leather scene, the two most common groups are psychotherapists and lawyers. This was purely a marketing decision for us.''