Paris Dominatrices

Image Credits: Nathan Selighini

V wears @matadorparis

H wears @falsecouture

Words by Molly Apple

The clinking of metal, reluctant moans, cries of pleasure and pain, sloppy noise, plastic film being wrapped, latex squeaking, heavy breathing, soft whispers, the sonic mixture of loud material and stripped down humans (literally) - are you turned on? V and Master Goon hope so. These two best friends turned fashion designers turned dominatrices are ready to express themselves no matter who’s watching. Their designs subvert the preconceived notions of who they are through working with fetish wear as they challenge culture to see past their physical bodies. MERDE Editor in Charge, Molly Apple, spoke with Master Goon and V about what it means to be a queer person in this space, how they find design inspiration through their experiences in BDSM, and more.

Molly: How did you two meet?

V: We met in college. The second day I moved to Paris from Brazil, we were both invited to a party by a mutual Brazilian friend. 

H: It was a straight person party *laughs*

V: It was very straight. It was a really cool bar though, and I was dancing on the balcony.

H: I can literally picture that right now to be honest. You were already on fire baby.

V: We didn’t get close until our second year of college, when we started classes together. 

H: We were together every single day the second year, when we really created the bond.

Molly: What drew you to each other creatively?

V: We started working together professionally just after college. 

H: V has something that I don’t have. 

V: And you have something I don’t have!

H: I admire that she’s so organized and focused on one thing. I’m everywhere, all the time. I consider myself a very crafty, messy person - let’s say it - trashy. I see the beauty and the glamor in mess, but I also see the beauty in V’s ability to be meticulous. My personality and brain doesn’t allow for this sometimes, but I’m often envious of her focus. 

V: To me it’s the opposite! I have OCD, and I was often very stressed with school deadlines and garment specs, everything had to be in order and very particular. When we started working together, he really pushed me to be more ‘free’ and go past barriers instead of limiting myself and my abilities. 

H: I think we complete each other.

Molly: What was your transition from being designers together to becoming Dominatrices?

H: I’ve always known myself very well, in terms of my sexuality and exploration, so it was always something that caught my attention both aesthetically and the practices, the mentality and the psychology behind it. Since my early gay boy days, it was something that was always in my head. After college, it was a struggle to find work and pay the bills as an immigrant. In college I was babysitting and bartending, but when I finished school and started custom design work, the commissioned work was all consuming and I didn’t have the capacity to work those other jobs. It was very destructive to my mental and physical health to divide myself this way just to survive. It’s not the way I want to live my life. I don’t want to be just a survivor, I want to have joy. I had a very good friend at this time, her name was Mistress *******, she doesn’t work as a Mistress anymore. At the time, she asked me to come work for her, she needed a partner for dual sessions, to organize her schedule, welcome clients, things like that. I thought ‘this is very unique, and I’m obviously taking it.’ I’d known her since 2016, so we have a friendship together. She hired me, it completely changed my situation and I threw myself into it. She was our mutual friend, with V, so we all were hanging out together and starting to build this Brazilian gang friendship.

V: To me, Mistress ******* would tell me about her work, and I was always intrigued by it, and I always wanted to know more. I hate masculinity, I think it’s so toxic and negatively affects us as women. I thought I would love to do that, but I’m not very into BDSM, and I’m not a very sexual person in general, but I thought the psychology of it was very intriguing. When we graduated, I was also in this cycle, working many jobs - babysitting, interning for a fashion brand, giving violin lessons, but I didn’t have a solid income even working non-stop. I had an intense burnout ‘freakout’ after one year, working to live and not doing what I loved. I quit everything at one and I traveled through Spain, working in a surf hostel, then Portugal, then Brazil. In Brazil I decided ‘ok I’m going to start now, I’m going to be a Dominatrix. I want to have these experiences, and start a fashion brand at the same time while having an actual personal life and sleep and income.’ I told Mistress ******* I wanted to start and she told me she’d fallen in love and wanted to retire. When I got back to Paris she said she would show me everything. When I first started, it was a little bit rocky because we had all just lost a dear friend in a sudden fatal accident. I needed time to grieve, but I also wasn’t in the best financial situation. Our friend had been extremely excited for me and supportive of my decision to be a Dominatrix, so it felt right to honor her by taking this leap. We started doing dual sessions. My first session was the most hard-core session I’ve ever done. We had to ball bust, so there was a guy in a St-Andrew’s cross and literally had to kick his balls. He also brought a hammer, I had to hammer his balls, and it was my first time so I was like what the fuck am I doing.

H:: It was a fucking construction hammer *laughs*

V: I was like ‘ok I can do this’ but I really was faking it all the way through, I had no idea what I was doing. It was really hard adapting at first because of the grief I was going through too, but honestly I think it was the best move. It’s a very flexible job, I couldn’t go back to being a server in a restaurant. After a month, H and I started working together on our own. 

Molly: What’s the connection that you see between your work as fashion designers and your work as dominatrice?

V: Being a dominatrix gave me a lot of confidence, and power within myself, that I can work through my own demons as well. The aspects of freedom, power and control in being a dominatrix translated into a new sense of freedom and power in my designs as well. Design wise, everything got a lot darker, color wise, which also went with the grief. I always liked religious references, so I think it wasn’t just elements of BDSM that translated into darkness in my designs, but death and grief. My life completely changed after her death, my work changed completely, when I was in college I was making such clean work, no colors but white, but now my work got a lot darker but also more colorful. H’s aesthetic was always rooted in BDSM.

H: Yes. I grew up in a very conservative small town in the Brazilian countryside, and I was a little 10-year-old watching Lady Gaga’s videography, Madonna’s concerts, and Mugler runway shows on YouTube. This built me. I remember watching the ‘Not Myself Tonight’ music video by Christina Aguilera so young, I drank from those references and they built me. My aesthetic speaks to my queer identity and my sexual liberty. When I think about how BDSM is specifically referenced in my fashion design work, it’s just fully ingrained into the process and I trust the authenticity of the outcome and the path that I’m on. 

Molly: Do you ever wear the clothes that you made in the sessions?

V: Sometimes, when I’m feeling bougie! I have my little latex uniform that is comfortable that I always wear, but there’s been a few times I’ve worn a chainmail corset, which was one of the first pieces we made together. I felt so cute and fancy.

H: Going back to the idea of trusting the process; There are people who come to the sessions for fetish or the fascination with the preconceived notions of BDSM, and are people who come because it’s their way of life. For me, it’s when a session is with someone who’s way of life it is when I enjoy it the most. When I make the parallel between BDSM and fashion and how I work, it’s tied to this notion of being a ‘guide’ to achieving your purpose. When you have to let yourself go in a session, you can achieve this moment of release of the ego, you can drop the mask or a negative pattern. In order to achieve this, you have to be guided by something or someone. When it comes to fashion, I am conscious of this voice of reason guiding myself to keep going because I know the outcome will bring the bliss I’m looking for. With BDSM, it’s the same thing, but I’m guiding someone else as the master of the session towards the bliss they’re looking for.

Molly: Wow. How does living in Paris as a dominatrix shape your dual creative practices? Have you faced prejudice or push back?

V: It’s very complicated for me, as a woman. I’m queer, but I’m still a woman, and the prejudice that comes with being a female dominatrix is upsetting to me. I’m Brazilian and Asian, I’m already sexualized, naturally. People think I’m shy or sexual because of stereotypes, which isn’t true, but also that I’m a whore because I’m a dominatrix which is also not true, which is all due to the images they have in their minds probably from watching porn. The first thing that comes to many people’s minds is that I do this because I don’t have any other choice. They hypersexualize me and project their preconceived judgements that I want to have sex with everyone, which is not the truth. I feel a lot more prejudice in straight spaces. Of course I want to have a boyfriend, but how will I break that I’m a dominatrix to them and explain to them that it’s just my job? It’s nothing personal, but because they have a pre-existing image of who a dom is, they will think what they see in porn or ‘50 Shades of Gray’ is the truth. H has more of a BDSM background, but I’m not really a very sexual person. It’s my lifestyle because it’s my work, but it’s not who I am. I enjoy doing it, I enjoy the psychological art of it. It’s very interesting to see these men who come to me and while some are very vulnerable, many want to live their fantasy but they can’t drop their ego or lose control. Because they’re a man, they’re trained by society to have control even when they’re in a session apparently trying to lose it, it still manifests. But it’s complicated for me in my personal life, because people have stereotypes and they like to think what they like to think, they don’t like to step out of it. I’m okay with myself, I just am still bothered by the oversexualization of women and the desire that many men have to control women. It’s almost like these kinds of men want to try a dominatrix session just to see if they can stay ‘bigger’ than the dominatrix. Even after kicking their balls, or dressing them as a feminine woman, they’ll say some show-off patronizing bullshit to me. 

H: Like V said, it’s mostly in straight environments we feel prejudice. Our friends are a queer and fashion community, and everyone is very supportive so we can be open and comfortable talking about it. 

V: Everyone is very open about their sexualities, and kinks and fetishes. Queer spaces always think what we do is quite cool. After almost 2 years of being a Dominatrix, I feel it makes us special and makes us stand out, fashion wise too.

H: Two Years ago we went to our first BDSM party, remember that? 

V: Yes! 

V: I think there are a lot of people trying the same thing as us, but in the end I think for us there’s just something more. It’s not just something we do for show, it’s our life. Some people just like to talk about liking fetish and wear latex and it’s more about how they look and being cool to them than building a life. 

Molly: MERDE Issue 8 is themed ‘AURAL’ - kind like Oral but spelled differently and meaning anything to do with sound and the ear. As BDSM is such a sensory experience, how do you approach sound and noise in your sessions?

V: The first thing I think about is my soundtrack. I take a lot of inspiration from vintage horror movies and sound effects. Everytime I start a session I play sounds by Jessie Jo Stark. It puts me in the dungeon zone and in the mood of feeling myself, she’s iconic. I like when men moan like a girl. 

H: Sometimes it's so difficult for them, I’m like, what the fuck ‘just moan, let it go!’ 

V: Noise wise, I like when my clients make sounds that show they’re enjoying something. It’s not very common, actually. People don’t often show much. I also love the clinking of metal. 

H: I like when the sounds are very close to you, but at the same time you don’t know if the sound means something good or bad. You can be very close to the person saying something very nice in their ear, but at the same time you’re holding their balls and squeezing tighter and tighter, it’s this combination of how you speak to them, what you do to them, and how they respond and react.

Molly: This is so eloquent.

V: When you do something, the sound of the response is the most satisfying. 

H: I love sloppy sounds, the sounds of plastic film, and latex squeaking, it’s just so good. When you have mummification sessions in plastic film as bondage, those are times that there’s breath control involved too.

V: That’s my favorite practice. Wrapping, the sound of plastic and the reaction of immobility and fatigue. 

H: Yes, then the mixture of sounds when you get on top of them. Sounds for me are very important. It’s not mandatory, but I’m a dom/switch person and being verbal for me is very important in order to evolve these parts. 

V:  Even the sound of the latex touching the plastic, for me, as an OCD person, it’s the greatest. I’m not really touching them, there’s multiple plastic barriers. 

H: We love it.

Molly: I love you.