John Sutcliffe built AtomAge into one of Britain’s most influential underground fetish enterprises. Beginning in 1957 under the deliberately innocuous description of a manufacturer of “weatherproofs for lady pillion riders,” he designed leather, rubber, and vinyl garments at a time when fetish clothing was treated by British authorities and much of the medical establishment as evidence of deviance or mental illness. His first catalogue appeared in 1965, and AtomAge developed into a magazine in 1972, documenting Britain’s S/M scene and circulating imagery that later influenced the punk wardrobe sold by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren at SEX on London’s King’s Road. Sutcliffe’s technical innovations—including specialized methods for stitching vinyl and attaching fabric to latex—helped make materials associated with underground sexuality into workable fashion media.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The 1982 Police Seizure That Erased John Sutcliffe’s AtomAge Archive
John Sutcliffe and AtomAge / 1980s
John Sutcliffe built AtomAge into one of Britain’s most influential underground fetish enterprises. Beginning in 1957 under the deliberately innocuous description of a manufacturer of “weatherproofs for lady pillion riders,” he designed leather, rubber, and vinyl garments at a time when fetish clothing was treated by British authorities and much of the medical establishment as evidence of deviance or mental illness. His first catalogue appeared in 1965, and AtomAge developed into a magazine in 1972, documenting Britain’s S/M scene and circulating imagery that later influenced the punk wardrobe sold by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren at SEX on London’s King’s Road. Sutcliffe’s technical innovations—including specialized methods for stitching vinyl and attaching fabric to latex—helped make materials associated with underground sexuality into workable fashion media.
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