How I got into the “BLUF look”
Story by: Nigel Whitfield
Photography by: Stuart Gregory
January 15, 2020
There’s the leather cap, and the Sam Browne belt across a leather jacket. Beneath that, there’s more leather still: a shirt with epaulets and a tie neatly clipped in place. Added to the ensemble is a pair of well-fitting breeches that have balloons on the side of each thigh, quilted padding at the knees, and contrasting saddle on the rear. Then there are the tall shiny boots. All this is what is typically known as the “BLUF look.”
For those who aren’t as familiar, BLUF is the Breeches & Leather Uniform Fanclub, but as you can see, it’s more than just a fanclub: it’s that pure Tom of Finland look with masculine, bulging breeches, on a uniformed man. To me, asking how I discovered my attraction to all this is like asking someone, “What first attracted you to a sick, elderly millionaire?” That, of course, is the benefit of hindsight. This, however, is how it all began.
Like many kinksters, I knew there were things I liked before I knew what kink or even sex was. Cowboys tied to trees, for example, was one of them, producing some of the first curious feelings I remember as a kid. I knew I wanted to be tied to a tree too. The Robomen in the Doctor Who film Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. had the most lasting impression on me as a child though: shiny uniforms, the power of mind control, and a conversion process involving confinement and suffering that turned victims into anonymized, willing slaves of the Daleks. I’d wanted to be “robotized” whenever we played Doctor Who.
Into my teens and early 20s, tight gear and restraints were a fascination. The thought of being helpless while someone else tormented me sexually was tremendously arousing, as too was the thought of domination by a powerful figure, and I found some early experiences of that through club nights like Sadie Maisie in the London of the early ’90s. Held at the now-shuttered London Lesbian and Gay Centre, Sadie Maisie was less intimidating than a leather bar, but nevertheless attracted plenty of kinky men, even if the full leather look was still quite rare. That’s where I found some of the first guys to take me home and punish me.
“Like many kinksters, I knew there were things I liked before I knew what kink or even sex was.”
In the latter part of the ’90s, I was newly single and the gay skinhead scene in Europe was booming. That might seem peculiar from an American perspective, but in Europe, and especially in the U.K., there has always been a strong strain of anti-racism amongst skinheads. With a love of masculinity and a lack of much leather gear (I think I had just a pair of jeans and some gloves), I spent quite a lot of time as part of that scene. It’s one that, like the military look, has always had some degree of cross-over with the leather world.
Indeed, now that I run BLUF, I often see applications from people I knew previously as gay skins. It is, after all, a relatively easy step from one hyper-masculine look to another and sometimes I wonder if many gay skins who, like those in the leather world often talk of brotherhood and loyalty, are really just leathermen who haven’t yet bought their gear.
It was a man I met on the gay-skinheads Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel who took me to the Backstreet in London for the first time. It was my first time riding on the back of a motorcycle too, in my first leather trousers, and a Fred Perry polo shirt. The trousers were bought from one of the many leather shops that used to be found on East London’s Brick Lane, before the hipsters moved in, for the princely sum of £50. Perhaps more than any other place, the Backstreet opened the leather world to me. Backstreet’s dress code insisted on some leather or rubber, but it was the type of leather that, it turns out, I liked the most: men in full leather who are smart, sexy, and confident.
From just the leather trousers, it didn’t take long before I’d acquired a shirt, a couple of ties, a Sam Browne belt, and a selection of boots. In some ways, it’s not so much of a change from the traditional skinhead look. Jeans, braces, a smart Ben Sherman shirt, and a bomber jacket constitute just as much of a uniform in my book.
I can still remember those early encounters at Backstreet, pressing my face into the fine smelling leather, inhaling the cigars when smoking was still allowed inside, and feeling the caress of leather gloves on my skin, as I knelt before a man in full kit. They may have been fleeting, but I also remember many of the faces and places like The Hoist or The Block, which have long since closed. I relished the moments of ecstatic fumbling, passionate kissing, whimpering submission, or kneeling before a cigar-smoking top, breathing in the heady aroma, while admiring his gear.
Leon Jacobs founded BLUF in 1997 when he was living in Montreal because he was looking for more people who were into leather breeches. Not all members were online when the club began but it grew and expanded into many other countries, and expanded even more into Europe when Leon returned to his native Netherlands.
My growing love for the gear made it inevitable, I suppose, that I would join BLUF. I became a member in 2005, on my second attempt. A couple of years after that, I took over organizing the events at Backstreet. Then, in 2009, Leon decided to step down and I volunteered to take over running the club.
Some things have changed since I took over, but others have not. The “BLUF look” and Tom’s men who wear it are growing. In November, BLUF turned 22 years old. There are many clubs that are older, with much more history, but few are so recognizable. In fact, for many in the kink community, describing an outfit as “full BLUF” needs no further explanation.
As the club continues to grow in size, BLUF has become almost a full-time job for me, and is more than just a look. And through that, it’s brought many amazing, sexy men into my life whom I otherwise would not have met. My days may be full of the administrative, technical, or legal work that keeps the club ticking. But my nights? They more than make up for that!
“My growing love for the gear made it inevitable, I suppose, that I would join BLUF.”
