Most of your ‘Dressing for Pleasure’ letters are about wearing rubber and latex for outdoor use, notably wading about in wet places and deep in streams and rivers.

This ignores all those of us who dress for pleasure, rarely to go outdoors and always as a form of highly pleasurable ‘escape’. This feeling of being totally shut off, cut off, from the outside world; of being entirely ‘protected’ from all the outside elements has a lot in common with our wading friends but the satisfactions are rather different. Walking about the house, lying on a bed dressed head to foot – and especially the head – in a totally enclosing outfit of ones own private design is an exquisite sensation both difficult to describe and difficult to understand except by the aficionados Rubber is, in many ways, better than leather but both materials have the protective qualities vital to this divine sport. Leather is better when it comes to headgear, hoods, gloves and footwear since it is not easily worked for the application of buckles, straps, lacing etc. Rubber and latex have the very definite disadvantage of tearing too easily and are less adaptable to the ingenious design refinements one creates. To those who like to add bondage in some form, leather, I would suggest, is far better as D rings and ‘attachments’ are more easily applied.

Rubber and latex, on the other hand, have a far better feel on the body and are more like the second skin. Rubber has the delicious ‘cloying’ effect that numbs the senses. With rubber, ‘enclosure’ is ‘total and absolute’.

The psychologists have described this interest as normally harmless and very common. It is, say the Freudians, a deep felt desire to regress to the womb. It has been said that this is a ‘healthy’ interest – allowing a recharging of our emotional batteries. It is only when this desire is frustrated by feelings of ‘it is not right’ or shame, induced by misunderstanding wives or friends, that problems start. Why should we not recreate the enclosure of the womb (if we are to accept the premise of the psychologists)? Surely, this is a better and less harmful escape from stress than going to the bottle, or gambling, or drugs?

My own outfits are elaborate and imaginative with hoods and masks and have a variety of restricting straps. Once totally enclosed – a ritual of dressing as pleasurable as the end result – then I can spend an hour or more in beautiful serenity and emerge wonderfully relaxed and at peace with myself. I am sure there are many other readers who feel the same? Perhaps they will confirm what I say in later issues.

– E. E. D. (Middx)