Leather

What is leather?

Leather is animal hide made durable by tanning, and in BDSM the material of cuffs, collars, harnesses and whips. Leather is a natural product with pores: it takes up heat and moisture, holds smell, and over time sets to the shape of whoever wears it. Dutch leer and English leather are the same word.

How leather is made

By tanning a hide, after which it can no longer spoil.

A cowhide is four to six millimeters thick and gets split in the tannery into about three layers. The top one is the leather that cuffs and straps are made from, the bottom one becomes sole leather. Tanning is done with chromium salts or vegetable, with ground oak bark. After that the leather goes into the aniline dye, which soaks in to about a millimeter deep. On every piece you can read the animal’s life back. Scars, insect bites, differences in pore density: no two pieces of leather take on the same color.

Why leather feels different from latex

Because it works with you instead of against you.

Latex seals: it holds heat and sweat against the skin and gives that tight, shining feeling. Leather does the opposite. It’s porous, so it takes up body heat and gives it back, and after half an hour a leather band feels warmer than the arm under it. On top of that comes the sound, which latex doesn’t have at all: the creak with every movement, and the smell that never fully leaves.

What you have to watch for

Your skin, and what you do afterward.

Chromium(VI) can form in leather when the chromium(III) from the tanning process oxidizes, and that compound causes sensitization and allergic reactions. Since 1 May 2015, leather goods that come into contact with the skin may therefore not contain more than 3 mg chromium(VI) per kilo of dry leather anywhere in the European Union. That norm explicitly does not apply to secondhand items that were already in use before that date, and that’s exactly the corner many used cuffs and harnesses come from.

Care is the second side. You can’t boil leather and you can’t machine-wash it, so a leather cuff that has come into contact with blood or bodily fluid stays with one person. Keep it supple with leather dressing and let it dry in the air, never on the radiator.

Where this fits on my site

If you want to know how leather feels on your skin without buying a cupboard full of it right away, the page about the BDSM date explains how a first evening is arranged and what you decide within it yourself.

Sources

• Commission Regulation (EU) No 301/2014 of 25 March 2014 amending Annex XVII to Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH) as regards chromium VI compounds. Official Journal of the European Union L 90/1, 26 March 2014. Supplies that chromium(VI) in leather goods that come into skin contact poses a health risk and can cause new cases of sensitization and allergic reactions; that chromium(VI) can form in leather through oxidation of chromium(III) compounds added in some tanning processes; the limit of 3 mg/kg (0.0003 percent by weight) of the total dry weight of the leather; the application from 1 May 2015; and the exception for secondhand items already in end use in the Union before that date.
• leer (material from animal hides). Marlies Philippa, Frans Debrabandere, Arend Quak, Tanneke Schoonheim and Nicoline van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, Amsterdam University Press, 2003–2009, via the Etymologiebank of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Supplies the meaning “durable material from animal hides”, the oldest attestation leder from 1240 and the form leer first in the compound leertouwer from 1480, the emergence of leer from leder through the loss of the d between vowels, and the shared Proto-Germanic form *leþra- that English leather and German Leder also go back to. That same dictionary treats leer in the sense “what is learned” as a separate entry.
• Leer (stof). Wikipedia, Dutch-language version. Supplies the thickness of four to six millimeters of a cowhide and its splitting into about three layers with sole leather as the bottom layer, the distinction between chromium tanning and vegetable tanning, the dyeing with aniline colorants that soak in to about a millimeter deep, the scars and differences in pore density that give each piece of leather different color nuances, and the advice to rub leather clothing with leather dressing.

Related terms

Leather here is the material; the community that formed around it is a separate story.

• Collar. The best-known leather object in BDSM, with a meaning of its own.
• Harness. Straps worn over the body, usually leather or nylon.
• Flogger. The whip whose falls are often leather, with a dull character.
• Latex. The material that does the exact opposite: sealing instead of working with you.