archeanuniverse:

Well, I’m home from New York and Cuba and thought it might be a good time to write my first blog as the current Miss Rubber World…

It’s been a long time since I first heard about the competition from Slinka at Ego Assassin. They were working on a VERY loud catsuit for Dawnamatrix – a neon  orange and UV blue circuit board number that left them with weeks of eyestrain and left Dawn with one hell of an attention grabber.  It didn’t win Miss Rubber World – Jean Bardot swept in and took the 2009 title, but it did pique my interest in the competition.  I vowed to be Miss Rubber World 2010.

Bad timing kept me from competing in 2010 – I was finishing up grad school when I should have been preparing, my boyfriend Matt was two weeks away from leaving his full-time job by the time the competition rolled around.  It was a perfect storm of too busy mixed with no planning, so we delayed for another year. Dawnamatrix won, wearing that same Ego Assassin catsuit I helped make paired with one of her kimonos.  Part of me was relieved – I knew at the time I didn’t have it in me to beat Dawn (who won on her third time running).  I saw her winning as a call to step up my game.  If I was going to win in 2011, I had to be better than Dawnamatrix!

In September 2010 I got to meet Dawn and her fiancée at the Montreal Fetish Weekend at a “Designers Dinner”.  Matt and I felt like we had come a long way since our humble beginnings a few years prior.  Amongst other things, I got the opportunity to chat with Dawn about running for Miss Rubber World – what was the competition all about?  What did the judges score upon?  What could I expect?

I decided shortly thereafter that I wanted to compete in 2011.  I was the second contestant to sign up, and eager to get to work.  In early October I sat down with Ego Assassin to figure out our game plan.  Matt and I aren’t clothing designers, and although we did make one of my outfits, I wanted something really outstanding, really bizarre, really me.  That meant getting Ego Assassin on board.  The idea was a rough sketch at first:
– A red catsuit (we have a delicious blood red sheeting that I was dying to use) to make my skin look red.  
– A black body over top of that to make it look like I was wearing something for a bit of modesty.  
– Something on the shoulders and thighs (overlays?) to give it a little extra “oomph”
– Shoulder/neck armor to broaden my shoulders and balance my large thighs

That’s what I gave them… not an easy task.  Having to deal with custom orders myself, I knew enough to give them plenty of time to design something for me, and they certainly didn’t disappoint!  56 hours of labor – almost all of which we captured in stop-motion video – gave me one incredible outfit.  The first two points that I gave them were simple enough, and they stuck to my sketch faithfully.  But the areas where I was vague – that “something” on my shoulders and thighs, that “armor” was where they really shined.  Choosing a designer whom you admire and giving them free reign can be intimidating, but as with taking any risk, the results can be outstanding.  This was the case for my catsuit.

I wanted some kind of texture on my arms and legs, they gave me custom arcane screen prints.  I wanted something to bulk out my shoulders, they gave me a 200 piece interlocking samurai-style shoulder armor with a tail.  Impressive doesn’t begin to cover it.  The outfit was finished just before Christmas – two and a half months after we first started talking about it (take note if you’re buying custom designs, this is a pretty standard turnaround time).

In the meantime, I needed a second outfit to wear and a performance piece.  I knew that I wanted something equally kick ass as my second outfit, but to add an additional challenge, I decided to design it myself.  Matt expressed some interest in doing inflatable latex, so the decision was obvious – Tank Girl!  I’ve dressed up as Tank Girl many, many, many times… but never in latex.  I thought some inflatable rocket boobs would be a great project.  Fairly simple, but high impact.  So Matt set off to work on the boobs, and I set off to work on the shorts and hat.

Let me say that designing form-fitting clothing is NOT easy.  I’m really good with latex, and work full-time in the latex industry.  But patterning clothing?  That I usually leave to Matt.  The shorts gave me more hassle than they were worth, but after five iterations (yes, FIVE iterations), I finally got them right.  The hat was just plain fun.  I love making crazy outfits… and had set myself a firm deadline for this one.  It had to be finished by the end of October to give it a test run at a superhero themed fetish party.

Fortunately, a rough version of the outfit was finished in time for the party and as luck would have it, Fetish stylist of the stars “The Richard” was at the same party.  He was impressed by my outfit, but spent a good 10 minutes giving me critique on how to improve it.  His advice proved invaluable.  I added a bullet belt and some stockings, changed up the makeup, cut out a couple of extra useless accessories (while the ladle looked cool at a party where I could beat people with it, it might be odd on stage!).  The end result was pretty spectacular!

Finally, the outfits for the performance – this was simpler.  We already had most of the outfits made, so apart from a few small accessories and a last minute trip to a tailor to make a vanilla dress burlesque-friendly, there wasn’t much to do.  The performance itself was a different matter!

I knew that I wanted to incorporate an upright vacbed into the performance, and we had a great idea to project slides or video onto the vacbed while I was in it.  This would be a multimedia performance where I interact with the slides in a “living art” piece.  Having a background in theater was critical in the success of this performance – we knew that it was quite technically involved, and wanted to make damn sure that there wouldn’t be any major issues performing this act.

So we did two test runs – the first was in early November at the Hard Rock Café.  My parents came out to cheer us on (they’re really supportive), and we did a slide show to a few songs while I interacted with the slides.  It was conceptually awesome, but at 10 minutes for the show, it really dragged on.  We got video of the performance and found out that one of the more powerful visuals was a body climbing in/pressing through the latex before the vacuum was suctioned down.  So in our second performance at Kapital Kink, we tried to incorporate more movement.  For that show, we cut it down to 7 minutes, added a plot line and two characters interacting with me outside of the bed.  Once again, I was interacting with the slides, they were interacting with me.  It was a great show, but the technical difficulties were atrocious!

Ultimately, for Miss Rubber World, we scrapped the projection altogether.  Using vacbeds in performances can be very dramatic, but it also gets boring REALLY fast.  There’s not much you can do with it… but there’s a lot you can do around it.  So we re-wrote the plot to work around a vacbed.  The idea was that I would be stripped, down and thrown in a vacbed, but there wasn’t more than about a minute of me struggling inside.  Still a powerful image, but a tighter more dramatic performance.

As it happens scrapping the projector was a great idea.  Crossing the border with a bunch of AV equipment is NOT an easy thing to do if you don’t have a work visa, and since we weren’t working, it’s a tough sell.  (Officer, I swear, it’s a free performance!!)  I won’t get into too much detail about the performance – we’re launching a new website in the spring, and my Miss Rubber World performance is going to be the launch video!  I’ll keep you guys posted.

XOX

~Archean