It’s a wet Tuesday in September, just a week ahead of R&M Leathers’s runway debut. Ruby Mariani, founder and designer of the cult women’s leather brand, is sitting at her worktable opposite a seamstress and intern, each carving and studding buttery leather skirts for the new collection.

The studio, situated in a poky room above a South London pub, has been decorated with vintage erotica and hazy porno-style images from a previous shoot with photographer Sharna Osborne. A glimpse of the upcoming collection hangs from a rail: supple bralettes, a sash studded with the words “Miss Leathers” — in ode to traditional fetish pageants — and frilled leather skirts cut with broderie anglaise.

To sum up R&M Leathers, you can quote its brand slogan, emblazoned across its bestselling T-shirts and belts: New England Sex. But with its debut show, intended to broaden the brand’s appeal beyond its tight community, the question is: does sex still sell?

In August, the show’s announcement surprised many of the brand’s loyal followers, who are accustomed to small collections, carry-over designs, and a largely custom output. The show will take place off-schedule during London Fashion Week inside the Round Chapel, a Grade II-listed circular venue in East London.

“We discussed that it would be nice to do a show where we explore leather counterculture with a runway setting, basing it a little bit on a peep show and a staged pageant, exploring the icons of sex,” says Mariani.

It’s an exciting moment for the designer. The runway show could expand her audience beyond its niche to a more institutional network of editors and buyers, while also opening it up to potential runway virality — a welcome boost for a small business.

A fashion alum of Curtin University in Perth, Mariani is the sole owner of her brand, which she founded in 2018 as a sole trader and built an online following through Instagram. With time, her made-to-order designs gained traction, spurred on by a Covid-induced turn towards small online businesses and consumer demand for a softer take on fetish wear.

It sits within a cohort of similar kink-fashion hybrid brands, including Soft Skin Latex and Ludovic de Saint Sernin.

In 2024, Mariani set up a limited company under the name Bound to Please. Since then, turnover has doubled, growing roughly 45% per year, per the designer.

According to Mariani’s accounting team, this growth has come without investment in marketing or press, nor outside loans and financing. At present, her team comprises four freelancers and four part-time interns on placement.

Most of her orders come from women in their 20s and 30s in California and New York, followed by the same age group in London.

Since 2024, celebrity cosigns came thick and fast, with looks spotted on Olivia Rodrigo, Lily Allen, Gabbriette and Dua Lipa. “Charli XCX started wearing our things before the Brat period,” says Mariani.

“We’ve been making her things for years.” The star first DM-ed Mariani in 2020, asking if she made custom pieces. Soon enough, XCX’s stylist Chris Horan got in touch, and R&M’s hide micro shorts became synonymous with the pop star throughout her Brat era.

Addison Rae’s stylist Dara Allen also frequently pulls R&M looks. (Rae herself was already an organic customer of the brand, Mariani says).

This celebrity buzz, plus an appreciation for craft amongst its community, has propelled R&M, offering a playbook for quick but manageable growth.

Client desires

Mariani was frugal in R&M’s early years. She would promote the brand using a traditional zine format inspired by the order catalogs of specialist fetish brands — a private clienteling pathway that chimes with shifts in luxury shopping towards the experiential and personalized. Unlike traditional fetish brands, however, Mariani takes a softer, more fragile approach to leather, making it suitable for broader use. The label skews two-thirds fashion consumers and one-third fetishists, Mariani estimates.

The brand’s kink and heavy metal-inspired image — a core selling point alongside its bespoke approach — draws on Mariani’s biography. Her father Dom is an Australian rock guitarist in several bands, and, circa 2010, she interned at a fetish shoemaker called Ilias Little Shoe Box in London.

“That really stuck with me. The fetish industry is one of the only industries in the UK — maybe Savile Row is similar — where they make things to order for people really specifically,” she says.

“There’s this high level of craftsmanship, and people demanding something that they can’t get anywhere else.” Later, she would sell belts and cuffs at shows while playing bass guitar in the British punk band Subdued, which led her to design full garments from her bedroom.

Typically, the entry point for R&M made-to-order designs is a belt (£200), while a dress might set a client back £2,500. Two-thirds of revenue comes from made-to-order.

Custom pricing starts at £2,500, and rush fees apply on top. There’s also cheaper branded “merch” for consumers wanting to buy into the brand for a fraction of the cost.

A set of lighters comes to £10 while a hoodie emblazoned with the word “Bitch” is £50.

Editorial traction and word of mouth have carried the brand to where it is now, but Mariani is ready to scale her team to boost production capabilities. “It’s gotten to that point where I feel we just need investment,” she says.

“It’s grown a lot, but the demand is so high, and the pieces take so long.” To her point, most designs from the leather category — the core of her business — take at minimum a day to make.

Showgirls

Given that, the expensive decision to show wasn’t an obvious one. That is, until Pornhub approached her with a proposal in April.

Fast forward to now, and Pornhub is funding the show, investing in casting, set design — by the esteemed Patience Harding — and production. (Pornhub declined to disclose the investment figure, but as Vogue Business reported in 2024, show costs for independent brands start at the higher end of five figures, often reaching $400,000.) In recent history, Pornhub has collaborated with several designers, including Shayne Oliver in 2017, Ludovic de Saint Sernin in 2022, and Vaquera in 2024, working on merchandise as well as NSFW films available on pornhub.com.

Through the partnerships, Pornhub can ingratiate itself with a new audience, while also removing the stigma around sex and adult industries, Mariani explains.

Thematically, Mariani’s a neat fit. The partnership involves a series of limited-edition pieces: a jeweled, big-buckle belt, a jacket, a bikini, and hosiery.

Notably, Pornhub performers and ambassadors Asa Akira, Elly Clutch, and Frances Bentley — who all have a major online presence — will walk the show. For context, Akira has 2.1 million Instagram followers and 569,600 likes on OnlyFans; Clutch has 334,000 and 1.16 million; and Bentley has 675,000 and 332,400.

Pornhub vouches for the crossover, too. “Any pearl-clutching brand that is sleeping on the tremendous reach, cultural relevance, and tastemaking power of adult content creators is missing out immeasurably, leaving money on the table,” says Alex Kekesi, Pornhub’s VP for brand and community.

“These are smart and business-savvy people who understand visual language as well as its commodification better than anyone else doing business online, I’d say. Sex always sells, and this is true more than ever now that creators are in the driver’s seat.”

Scaling pleasure

While Mariani’s work is largely made-to-order, she has worked with a handful of stockists dotted across Melbourne, Tbilisi, Seoul, New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. Marc Jacobs’s buzzy Gen Z-focused diffusion line, Heaven, had been one of its prized partners in London and LA since 2022 up until the stores shuttered this year. (In October 2024, R&M hosted a pop-up at the New York Heaven store, in collaboration with Gabbriette.)

To reach a broader customer base, Mariani understands she may need to broaden her offering. “Custom leather bras, they’re not for everybody,” she says, noting that while she was reluctant to veer away from leather in the beginning, she eventually embraced carryover items like T-shirts — a continuous best-seller — and more casual items.

“I felt like I only had a connection [if the garment was] leather,” she explains. In practice, though, the branding and codes of R&M have transcended the material, proving popular among younger consumers or older ones who connect with the vintage rock-and-roll and kink aesthetic.

In her bid to provide more staple pieces, Mariani wants to invest in production so she can scale the leathers, too. “There needs to be a little bit of access,” she says, “to people who want a piece but just ready-to-wear — like the wardrobe staple.” She’s also keen on the idea of a brick-and-mortar space to boost the custom business.

“It would be amazing if we had an actual store,” says Mariani. “It’s not often we get to have fittings.

I feel like leathers can be quite forgiving, but I think when we’re doing customs, that’s a tricky part of the business.”

Would she ever broach menswear? “I would, and I get asked that constantly,” she says.

“We’ve dabbled,” she adds, noting a one-off commission (leather jock and accessories) for James Jeanette’s 2018 performance in the band Wild Daughter at London’s last men-only leather bar, the Backstreet. “Stylists ask for it, stores have asked for it,” she adds.

Mariani also notes the resurgence of a very “Hedi Slimane silhouette” in menswear, offering R&M an inroad to capitalize on.

For her, kink in fashion is old news. Vivienne Westwood’s Sex store in the late ’70s and Versace’s infamous Fall 1992 “Miss S&M” collection are just a few examples. What’s different, she suggests, is that shock factor no longer plays a role. “People are becoming a little bit more comfortable with sexuality, and they’re combining things like this into wardrobes.”