John Sutcliffe (designer)

John Sutcliffe (died 1987) was a British fetish clothing designer and publisher of the fetish magazine AtomAge.

In the 1950s he was divorced because his feelings about leather had led to him being diagnosed as mentally ill and treatment failed to change him.

He began his AtomAge fetish clothing business in 1957, registering it as a “manufacturer of weatherproofs for lady pillion riders”.

He was an influence on the leather catsuits worn by Emma Peel in The Avengers, and created the leather catsuit worn by Marianne Faithfull in the 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle.

Sutcliffe published AtomAge magazine, a fetish magazine that was an offshoot of his fetish clothing business. The magazine has been called the “underground bible of leather, rubber and vinyl fetish wear throughout the 1970s” and documented Britain’s S/M scene. The first AtomAge clothing catalogue was published in 1965 and it expanded into a magazine in 1972. The magazine ended in 1980.

Sutcliffe’s work helped inspire Sex, a boutique run by Vivienne Westwood and her then-partner Malcolm McLaren at 430 King’s Road, London between 1974 and 1976, which specialized in clothing that defined the look of the punk movement.

In 1982 Sutcliffe published a novel by Jim Dickson called The Story Of Gerda, about bondage and fetishism. A copy of it was sent to the police, and to keep from being prosecuted Sutcliffe agreed to have all stock and AtomAge magazine plates destroyed.

He created a sewing needle for vinyl that improved the ability to stitch and work that material, and a method for attaching a muslin-type fabric to latex, which after that could be securely sewn. He also created a sewing machine specifically for leather and asked Singer to manufacture it, but as remembered by his friend Robert Henley, “Singer were so horrified, they called the police.”

Legacy

In 2023 he was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame.

Further reading

Dressing for Pleasure in Rubber, Vinyl and Leather: The Best of Atomage 1972-1980. Jonny Trunk (author). Damon Murray, Jonny Trunk, and Stephen Sorrell (editors). United Kingdom: FUEL, 2010.

References

External links

Atomage Magazine Appreciation Site (A private, non-commercial site featuring the history and work of John Sutcliffe and his Atomage fetish clothing business)

Dressing For Pleasure, the book of Atomage imagery, history and readers letters

EVOLVER article on John Sutcliffe (in German)