From the Dungeon to the Red Carpet: How BDSM-Inspired Fashion Conquered High Style

Alexander Sk arsgård wore leather chaps to Cannes. Emma Chamberlain wore custom latex Mugler to the Met Gala. Ludovic de Saint Sernin called his collection “BDSM BALLET.” The culture has shifted — and the fashion industry just made it official.

The fetish aesthetic is no longer transgressive — it’s prestigious. When the Met Gala, Cannes, and Paris Fashion Week all feature BDSM-adjacent looks in the same 12-month window, the fashion industr y has made its position clear. This story is about that crossing, w ho built the bridge, and what comes after.

Ludovic de Saint Sernin and BDSM Ballet

Ludovic de Saint Sernin (LdSS) Spring/Summer 2025 “BDSM BALLET” collection featured eyelet-studded leather chaps and harness-style bodices paired with ballet-inspired silhouettes. It was the most-discussed collection of Paris Fashion Week in terms of cultural impact, and effectively declared the mainstreaming of BDSM-adjace nt fashion complete [1] .

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Cannes and the Met Gala

*Alexander Skarsgård

• wore multiple kink-adjacent ensembles at the Cannes Film Festival 2025 — including leather chaps and biker-inspired harnesses — to promote the film Pillion, about a queer sub-dom relationship in biker culture. The looks were widely covered and widely copied [2] .

Emma Chamberlain wore a custom latex Mugler look to the Met Gala 2025 and a taupe leather LdSS gown to t he Vanity Fair Oscar Party — making her one of the most visible carriers of the latex/kink-adjacent aest hetic into mainstream fashion media [3] .

Mugler and the 1980s Fetish Revival

Mugler Spring/Summer 2026 under Miguel Castro Freitas leaned fully into high-shine latex and PVC architectural pieces, explicitly referencing 1980s fetish-club bravado as a design source [1] .

Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 album Man’s Best Friend incorporated “pup play” imagery and sex-positive lyrics — analysed by them. and Vogue as a pivot from “babygirl pop” toward explicit kink aestheti cs in mainstream pop music [4] .

The Grammys and Haute Couture

Bianca Censori at the 2026 Grammys and Chappell Roan’s nipple-piercing harness construction at the same event represent two distinct points on the kink-adjacent mainstream spectrum — one provocative, one artistically intentional, both impos sible to look away from [5] .

Givenchy Spring 2026 under Sarah Burton used leather-rendered staples, cutaway bras, and bejewelled netting — effectively bridging th e gap between the nightclub fetishwear aesthetic and haute couture with a single collection [6] .