Latex Clothing - Design and Manufacture

Design and Manufacture

There are a handful of companies around the world which manufacture latex rated as suitable for contact with human skin. These firms supply sheet (in the vast majority) to a larger number of smaller fashion clothing companies. In the past, some marketplaces suffered from de facto monopoly supply conditions, where a sheet supplier could impose restrictive ordering requirements. Only being able to order half-kilometre long batches of sheet in the colour and thickness they wanted, meant that designers and clothing producers often had to co-operate, or face long delays in supplying their customers, if they wanted to be in the rubber clothing business.

Since 2000, however, the sheet market has been exposed to competition from international suppliers courtesy of the Internet. This has produced an explosion in cottage industry scale latex fetish clothing manufacturers.

Latex sheet based clothing is constructed by a three-stage process. First a pattern for a specific garment is selected, and adjusted carefully to suit the measurements supplied by the customer. Then the sheet latex is cut out on a flat board, by hand: lastly latex glue (generally rubber cement solvent based adhesives) is used to join seams together. Skilled latex makers can build a stocking, shaped to match the contours of a specific person's leg, made from latex only 0.2mm thick, in under an hour. It is possible to use water-based glues such as Copydex to make latex clothes; however, the long-term durability of items made this way is somewhat dubious.

Latex moulded clothing is produced by dipping a mould into a vat of liquid rubber. Dealing with raw liquid latex is more difficult because of the extra effort that must be put in to keep the thickness of the latex itself consistent. Because of this, improper molding techniques can lead to inconsistent thickness in the latex, causing it to fail at the weak points faster than items made from sheet latex. This has led to a major stigma against molded latex garments, in favor of sheet latex versions. Unfortunately, this stigma has been detrimental to those few latex providers who have proper mold-making techniques. When done properly, a molded latex garment is just as durable as sheet latex, and it is a preferred method for skilled individuals making items with heavy contours like hoods or gloves. Despite any attempt to use sheet latex to make hoods and gloves, it is impossible to get solid sheets to fit complex contours as well as a molded latex item can. The belief that all sheet latex is superior to all molded latex is completely false, and ultimately it depends on the abilities of the creator, as even poorly made sheet latex can fall apart easily. Sheet latex is the preferred method for items like catsuits, that do not need such perfect form fitting, and are easier to create with sheets compared to the large molds required for body suits.

It should be noted that sheet latex is actually manufactured from liquid latex, so it is best to ignore anyone who tries to sell you on the superior physical properties of one over the other, since they are in fact the same thing chemically once dry.

Neither moulded, nor sheet-based, latex is amenable to large scale mass production. Skilled manual artistry is an integral part of the process; this means that made-to-measure and special designs are much more accessible to the general buyer, in looking at fetish latex, than is the case with regular textiles.