International Ms. Leather (IMsL) is an annual leather-subculture fetish convention and title contest. It began as a women-centered event and has since opened to all genders. Since 1999 the weekend has also crowned a Ms. Bootblack (IMsBB). Local Ms. Leather events ran in San Francisco from 1981; the first formal International Ms. Leather convention arrived in 1987. The first International Ms. Leather titleholder was Judy Tallwing McCarthey.
For leather and kink communities, IMsL is not a beauty pageant with a leather costume bolted on. It is a leadership pipeline: contestants prove they can speak, organize, teach scene knowledge, and represent title culture under pressure—skills the wider BDSM and leather worlds still need after the bar-and-club decades that built the scene.
Awards and Recognition
In 1988 International Ms. Leather took the Large Club of the Year award at the Pantheon of Leather Awards. In 2009 it received the Chuck Renslow President’s Award from the Leather Archives & Museum. Pantheon named IMsL Large Event of the Year in 2009, 2013, and 2017; in 2018 the International Ms. Leather Bootblack program received that same Large Event honor. Those trophies track how the contest grew from a San Francisco gathering into a fixture of international leather calendar politics.
Geography, Archives, and Foundation
In 2014 the event moved from San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood to San Jose. The Leather Archives & Museum holds photos, video, and oral histories of both International Ms. Leather and International Mr. Leather; that material fed Christina Court’s 2015 documentary High Shine: 15 Years of International Ms Bootblack. The International Ms Leather (IMsL) Foundation began work in 2015 with a stated mission to foster healthy environments for women to succeed in leather and kink spaces through education, programming, and financial support. In 2016 the foundation won Nonprofit Organization of the Year at the Pantheon of Leather Awards.
How Contestants Are Judged
Community leadership has been the spine of the contest from day one. Before the weekend, contestants must hit objectives and deadlines. On site they are scored on costuming, speech, a fantasy performance, leather-scene knowledge (quiz and interview), and organizing skill—shown in part by having two others set up an auction table for them at the convention. Producers have included Audrey Joseph and 1993 International Ms. Leather winner Amy Marie Meek (later Amy Meek-DeJarlais). “Amy Marie Meek – International Ms. Leather” received the International Deaf Leather Recognition Award in 2001. Judges have included writer and leather community figure Kitty Tsui.
Alongside the main title, International Ms. Bootblack winners form a parallel lineage of craft and service—bootblacking as public labor, community skill, and erotic care work. Together the IMsL and IMsBB titles map how women’s and inclusive leather leadership is trained, staged, and archived: not only who looks sharp in gear, but who can run a table, hold a mic, answer hard questions, and carry a year of representation without collapsing the scene’s ethics into a sash alone.
