International Mr. Leather (IML) is the long-running Chicago contest and convention that still functions as leather’s unofficial world title. Every Memorial Day weekend it packs hotels, dance floors, a vendor market, and a Sunday night sash ceremony with men who won bar, city, or regional leather contests—or who arrived with a sponsor from the levi/leather, uniform, SM, western, or gear worlds. Organizers now use IMLBB as an umbrella for the leather title and International Mr. Bootblack. By 2025 more than 2,200 contestants from 28 countries had walked the weekend. Proceeds feed a trust for the Leather Archives & Museum. If you care about harnesses, protocol, bootblacking, and the public face of gay male kink, this is the pageant that taught the rest of the circuit how to do it.
The format is half homage and half satire of women’s beauty contests: men get a stage on which to be looked at by other men, specifically the leather and BDSM crowd. It is not a vanilla Mr. Universe with extra chrome. Interview, “Pecs and Personality,” leather image, and a speech decide who wears the sash. The winner becomes a traveling emblem for a year—or, in IML’s own language, a free agent who can use the title as they choose. Either way, Chicago in late May is still where local titleholders go to find out how they look under international lights.
From the Gold Coast Bar to a Global Weekend
The ancestor was the Mr. Gold Coast contest at Chuck Renslow’s Gold Coast leather bar, run with his partner Dom Orejudos (the artist Etienne). Through the 1970s it outgrew the room. In 1979 Renslow renamed it International Mr. Leather, moved it to a larger venue, and mailed flyers to every leather bar he and his circle could name. They did not know whether a Chicago bar title could become global. By year two the name had started to come true.
The first weekend ran 18–20 May 1979. Advertising promised “some of the world’s hottest men” from leather bars and clubs in America and Europe, prizes then worth $5,000 (including a motorcycle), and a $25 weekend package: an Etienne shirt, party tickets, and coupons for shops and bathhouses. Comedian Pudgy and the band Wacker Drive entertained. Contest-only tickets were $10. Orejudos designed the promotional art, including the “Wingman” logo still in use. David Kloss won; Durk Dehner and Jesse Capello were first and second runners-up. Tom of Finland volunteered to judge, then withdrew for health reasons; he judged in 1983 instead. Twelve men from six U.S. states competed. There were no overseas entries yet. The title was an ambition, not a census.
In 1980 the Black and Blue Ball arrived as the Monday closer and never left. That year Australia’s Patrick Brooks beat a field of Americans and became the first overseas winner—the moment the “International” prefix stopped being marketing. Marty Kiker, sponsored by San Francisco’s Brig and Phoenix, took 1981. Glynn Sudbery handled press in 1982. By 1984 attendance had jumped from about 300 to 1,500. The same year Ron Moore became the first Black International Mr. Leather. In 1997 his sister Genelle Moore won International Ms. Leather: the first sibling pair to hold the two global titles.
On 28 May 1989, at IML 11, Tony DeBlase unveiled the leather pride flag. The design moved almost immediately onto the winner’s sash. That is why the stripes you see at Folsom, at local contests, and on pins in the market are not generic rainbow merch: they were launched in a Chicago ballroom in front of the leather title crowd. Guy Baldwin, the therapist and old-guard writer, won that year’s title—one of the few winners equally famous for books and for the sash.
The Leather Archives & Museum, co-founded by Renslow and DeBlase, now holds IML’s records and art. Since 2009 contest proceeds have gone into a trust for LA&M. The Congress Plaza Hotel has housed guests and parties every year since 2015; the Sunday contest often sits across the street in larger rooms such as the Auditorium Theatre. COVID canceled the in-person weekends in 2020 and 2021. IML returned in May 2022. In 2025 the gay men’s kink hookup site Recon paid to live-stream the contest—the first official broadcast to a wider audience than whoever could buy a seat.
How You Qualify and How You Are Scored
As of 2024 you must present as male, be 21 or older, and either win an approved preliminary (bar, local, or regional leather contest that awards an IML slot) or arrive with a primary sponsor: a bar, business, club, or organization in levi/leather, uniform, S&M, western, gear, or related lifestyles. Then you file an application and a fee. There is no “I saw it on Instagram” wild-card lane that skips the scene infrastructure. That rule is why IML still functions as a federation of local titles rather than a reality-show open call.
Preliminaries are private and public. Each of nine judges interviews every contestant for up to eight minutes (60 percent of the preliminary score). Saturday’s Pecs and Personality stage set is the other 40 percent. High and low scores drop; the remaining seven decide the top twenty Sunday finalists. If two men tie for twentieth, dropped scores come back; if they still tie, each judge votes for one man. Preliminary points do not carry into Sunday. Two tally masters watch the math.
Sunday scoring is a 100-point scale in three blocks: leather image (40), presentation and speech (40), physical appearance (20). Again high and low drop. The three highest remaining totals are second runner-up, first runner-up, and International Mr. Leather. Ties use the dropped scores, then a forced judge vote. The weighting is a leather-culture essay in numbers: what you wear and how you speak outrank a body contest. You can be pretty and still lose to a man who looks like he actually lives in the gear and can talk about service, HIV history, or his home bar without collapsing.
Twenty-eight countries on six continents have sent official contestants. Forty-four U.S. states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico have appeared; Delaware, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Wyoming have not, nor have American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Some winners immigrated from countries that had not yet sent an official slate. Venezuela-born Gary Iriza (Mr. Palm Springs Leather) won IML 30 in 2008, more than a decade before Venezuela fielded Mr. Leather Venezuela in 2019. International or non-geographic prelim titles (Mr. Leather Europe, Mr. Gay Naturists International Leather, Leathermen of Color, Mr. Midwest Leather) are credited to the man’s country of residence.
Winners Worth Knowing (Not Every Year the Same)
As of 2026, 46 men from eight countries have held the sash: the United States (38), Germany (2), and one each from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Mr. Texas Leather and Mr. Palm Springs Leather have each produced three winners, the most of any single feeder. Winner “cities” in old tables mix hometown, current residence, and the city that hosted the prelim title. Jack Thompson (2019) is a clean example: credited via Baltimore, he won his prelim in Washington, D.C., and told interviewers he was actually from Berkeley, California.
The first decade is origin myth. Kloss (1979) is the prototype titleholder. Brooks (1980) proves the overseas claim. Moore (1984) breaks the color line in a subculture that still has to work at that. Baldwin (1989) ties the sash to leather intellectual history. Thomas Karasch’s 1987 win is part of the early European lane that later produced Germany’s two titles. You do not need a laminated list of every 1990s first runner-up to understand the institution. You need to know that local bars kept sending men, that AIDS years did not kill the weekend, and that the sash became a service job as much as a beauty prize.
The 2000s are the documentary era. John Pendal (2003), Jason Hendrix (2004), Michael Egdes (2005), Mikel Gerle (2007), Iriza (2008), and Jeffrey Payne (2009) appear in Mike Skiff’s 2010 film Kink Crusaders, which followed the 2008 convention and interviewed Renslow plus earlier winners including Kloss, Baldwin, Jeff Tucker, and Tony Mills. An epilogue was added after 2010 to record Tyler McCormick’s win: first openly transgender man, first wheelchair user, and first New Mexican to take IML. That is not a diversity footnote. It is the contest admitting, in public, that “Mr. Leather” is an identity and a presentation, not a cisgender medical category and not an able-bodied uniform.
2012 staged two weddings and the first pair of married contestants competing against each other—leather’s answer to the marriage-equality years, played as spectacle and as kinship. 2019’s Thompson win made him the first openly trans person of color to take the title and the first time Black men won IML in consecutive years. Ramien Pierre (2014, Mr. D.C. Eagle) and Patrick Smith (2015, Mr. Los Angeles Leather) mark the mid-2010s East Coast / West Coast feeder strength. After the COVID gap, Gael Leung Chong Wo (2022), Marcus Barela (2023), and Jamal Herrera-O’Malley (2024) reopened the live sash line.
2025 is a structural milestone: Rene Hebert became the first bootblack to win International Mr. Leather—the service title crossing into the glamour title. 2026 went to Honey Davenport (Mr. Palm Springs Leather 2026), a RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11 alum and the second straight Palm Springs winner after Hebert. Runners-up were Sgt. Alex (Mr. Cincinnati Leather 2025) and Denzel Belin (Mr. Twin Cities Leather 2026). Atlas Rose (Route 66 Bootblack 2025) took International Mr. Bootblack. Palm Springs sending two IML winners in a row is the current feeder story; a drag performer winning the leather sash is the culture story: presentation-as-male, leather image, and speech still beat any single stereotype of who “looks IML.”
The Leather Market and the Bootblack Contest
The vendor floor is not an afterthought. For days it sells leather, rubber, uniforms, books, safer-sex kits, and club merchandise to thousands of walk-throughs. Past and present booths have included the Chicago Department of Public Health, Folsom Street Events, Howard Brown Health, Mid America Fists In Action, MIR, Nasty Pig, and Recon. Many of those names also sponsor the weekend. Public-health tables next to fist-fucking clubs is the IML thesis in furniture: this community fucks, tests, and archives itself in the same hall.
International Mr. Bootblack began in 1993 as a mixed-gender International Bootblack Competition, meant to honor the people who actually shine the gear the titleholders wear. In 1998 the mixed contest split: IMBB stayed with IML; International Ms. Bootblack moved to International Ms. Leather (itself annual since 1987). From 1999, IMBB has been limited to people 21 and over who present as male. The stated reason was blunt: IML’s audience is mostly gay men, and women were losing ballot traffic to contestants those men wanted to cruise. Whether that was fairness or segregation is still argued; the institutional fact is two gendered bootblack titles on two weekends.
Bootblacks work a station in the market. Weekend-package holders, judges, contestants, and vendors get a ballot good for one shine by the bootblack of their choice. Anyone can get a shine; only ballots elect. Tipping is customary, not required. Hours run Friday through Sunday whenever the market is open—about twenty hours across three days. Since 2001 contestants have usually agreed not to shine or take ballots off the clock, so they can attend parties without campaigning every minute. On Saturday, before Pecs and Personality, each IMBB contestant gives a speech so Sunday voters know whom they are choosing. On Sunday the IMBB winner, runners-up, and Brotherhood Award (the contestants’ own “congeniality” vote) are announced before the IML sash. All seven men may return for photos.
David Hawks (IMBB 2000) professionalized the sidecar economy: a Saturday-night IMBB party with a silent auction for the winner’s travel fund, plus volunteers selling travel-fund pins at a market table. The coordinator holds the money; reimbursements need receipts. From 2013 a judges’ panel scored technical shining, public presentation, and interview; ballots became only a share of the total. In 2019 Dutch bootblack Kriszly de Hond became the first primarily non-English-speaking IMBB and the first winner from outside North America—the first time “International” in the bootblack title was geographically honest.
As of 2026, 29 people from four countries have won IMBB: United States 25, Canada 2, Netherlands 1, United Kingdom 1. Early 2023 brought a crisis: the entire IMBB staff resigned, citing years of mistreatment and fading interest. The 2023 contest could not run until IML and bootblack staffs negotiated. The title returned three years later at IML 48 in 2026, with Atlas Rose as the new Mr. Bootblack. That gap is part of the history too: service labor inside leather is easy to romanticize and easy to burn out.
What a Title Year Actually Is
IML’s own contestant guide is almost aggressively hands-off: the winner has no required duties and is a free agent. In practice the year is a reputation economy. Local contests invite the new Mr. Leather to judge, speak, or just stand in a bar so the city can say it hosted the sash. Clubs want a photo. Charities want a name on a flyer. The man who treats the year as a vacation is remembered. The man who treats it as service—HIV outreach, archive fundraising, showing up at a small-town prelim—joins the lineage that Baldwin, Moore, and the bootblack winners already occupy. There is no commissioner making them do it. That is why the speech score is forty points. The weekend is an audition for a job nobody can force you to work.
Leather image, the other forty, is not a shopping receipt. Judges look at whether the gear looks lived-in: broken-in boots, a harness that fits, a uniform that means something besides a catalog. Brand-new head-to-toe chrome reads as costume. Old-guard protocol (hats, cover, handshake rules) still leaks into how some judges see “image,” even when the score sheet does not say “old guard.” Newer contestants bring rubber, pup hoods, sports gear, and drag-adjacent presentation—Honey Davenport’s 2026 win is the current proof that “present as male” plus leather image is a bigger tent than a 1979 bar photo. The fight over that tent is the culture. The score sheet is just where the fight gets numbers.
International Ms. Leather, annual since 1987, is the sister institution, not a ladies’ auxiliary. IMsBB lives there. The two weekends share a museum, a flag vocabulary, and a lot of the same vendors. They do not share a judging room. People who talk about “the leather contest” as if there were only one are usually talking about IML because it is older, louder, and gayer-male in the tourist imagination. The fuller map is IML + IMsL + the regional prelims + the bootblack titles + the European and Pacific feeders. Chicago in May is the hub, not the whole wheel.
What IML Did to Leather Culture
Leather contests look silly if you only see pecs. They look like infrastructure if you watch what winners do afterward: found clubs, open bars, start local titles, teach protocol, raise money for archives and health. The Chicago Reader in 2024 called IML an institution that funds grassroots groups and gives people a place to trade goods, information, and kinship. National Leather Association International is one of the organizations whose origin stories run through IML attendees. The weekend is also how a man from a small city learns that his bar title is a dialect of a world language.
Awards followed the staying power. Chuck Renslow – IML received an International Deaf Leather Recognition Award in 1995. IML took Pantheon of Leather Business of the Year in 1999 and Large Event of the Year in 2007 and 2012. Chicago’s LGBT Hall of Fame inducted the contest in 2010; the Leather Hall of Fame followed in 2018 at Cleveland Leather Annual Weekend. On 25 May 2018 the Chicago City Council named a stretch of Clark Street in Uptown (Winnemac to Ainslie) “Chuck Renslow Way,” and the city unveiled the sign during IML’s anniversary week. That is as close as a kink pageant gets to a civic plaque.
Christina Court’s 2015 documentary High Shine: 15 Years of International Ms Bootblack used LA&M photos, video, and oral histories of IML and IMsL. Joseph W. Bean’s International Mr. Leather: 25 Years of Champions (2004), published with LA&M, is still the paper chronicle for 1979–2003. Robert Davolt’s Painfully Obvious treated the contest as living leather/SM folklore. Together they are why this is not only a party you had to attend: it is a documented lineage.
For BDSM readers who never want a sash, IML still matters as a map. It shows how gay male leather built a parallel Olympics: prelims, judges, a market, a service title, a museum, and a flag. It shows who got into the photo first (white cis men) and who forced the frame wider (Moore, McCormick, Thompson, Hebert, Davenport). It shows that bootblacking is not a cute side hustle but a craft with its own world title and its own labor dispute. And it shows Chicago—not San Francisco, not Berlin—as the annual capital where the gear comes off the fetish site and onto a stage with a scoring sheet.
If you go: the weekend is more than Sunday. Speakers, socials, themed dances, the market, and the Black and Blue Ball are the actual convention. Contestants are expected to be present, not to hide until interview. The sash does not come with a mandatory travel calendar; what you do with IML is a reputation you build. The archive does come with a mandate: the photographs, the Etienne drawings, the flag, and the names go to LA&M so the next man who thinks he invented leather protocol can be handed a program from 1979.
International Mr. Leather remains the granddaddy leather event because it outlasted bars that founded it, a plague, a pandemic, and a staff revolt on the bootblack side. It is still a beauty contest. It is also a kink trade show, a fundraising engine, and a living index of who leather is willing to call “Mr.” in public. That combination—chest, speech, gear, service—is why Memorial Day in Chicago still reads, to the people who fly in, as the center of the map.
