Fashion has always been sexy. For as long as there has been dress, there has been states of undress – and people willing to use it tactically. Just look at how sex splattered across the AW26 runways. Nipples were proclaimed the accessory du jour at McQueen, Mugler, and Tom Ford. At Demna’s Gucci catwalk debut, buttcrack was back via a Kate Moss g-string, while leather and sheers reigned supreme. Underwear was outerwear at Vivienne Westwood, where garter belts and fishnets adorned male and female models alike. And this awards season, the naked dress has made its way back to the red carpet, led by Chappell Roan and her headline-making Mugler nipple dress at the Grammys.

But while we know that designers has always taken inspo from our dirty desires, the literal tools used to enhance pleasure and provide orgasms are increasingly sliding into the fashion world. Back in 2022, then-creative director Alessandro Michele featured butt plug necklaces on the Gucci runway. Diesel used a murano buttplug for its SS23 show invite, and this year displayed a series of vibrators, made in collab with Lelo, in its AW26 showspace. For her fetish-tinged Fendi debut, Maria Grazia Chiuri collared models in fur and leather chokers, while the recent ‘Suck’ t-shirt from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Junior Gaultier line gives the illusion of a comically oversized penis inside a cock ring. And in December, Lily Allen accessorised her Valentino dress with polka dot blue butt plugs in an ode to her album West End Girl.

“Fashion has always been a site where people negotiate sexuality, power, and identity”

According to sex educator Birna Gustafsson, wearable sex toys could be the next frontier in fashion. “Fashion has always been a site where people negotiate sexuality, power, and identity,” she says. “What feels new right now is just how explicitly sexual it is.” Whereas previously, clothes might have strategically clung to body parts (read: breasts, bums, and hips) for the viewing pleasure of anyone looking (read: men), garments are exposing more skin and, in some instances, facilitating pleasure for the wearer. Sex toys as clothes and vice versa.

Crave was the first brand to create ‘pleasure jewellery’ with its Vesper necklace in 2014, and this year  collabed with feminist erotic filmmaker Erika Lust on a wearable vibrator. “Pleasure jewellery makes people feel a certain way when you start to wear it,” explains founder Ti Chang, who has since expanded the range to include rings and handcuff bracelets. “These are objects that are designed to be left out in the open – not disguising pleasure, but celebrating it.” Much like wearing your favourite label, more subtle wearable sex toys, like Crave’s Vesper necklace or Unbound’s Flick ring, are a way of communicating with others in the know, says Chang. “People who wear this out strike up conversations with people they otherwise wouldn’t have,” adds Chang. “That’s one of the keys to removing stigma and shame from pleasure: we have to be able to talk about it.”

Who’s involved in these discussions is also changing. Historically, women and queer people have led the charge to change attitudes about sexual expression, in an attempt to reclaim their sexuality in a world where male pleasure takes precedence. But men are now getting in on the fun, too. “Lots of my male friends wear Vesper,” says Lust. “It’s neutral, and they can use it to signal they’re a modern man who knows about sex toys.” Or rather, that they care about their partner’s pleasure. Considering Gen Z men have been seduced by the rise of conservatism, and are the least likely of all generations to be able to label the clit, wearable sex toys can help make sex more accessible, whether they’re actually used or not.

And while sex tech and runway styles can come with a high price tag, you don’t need to break the bank to show you’re DTF through your style, as Gustafsson clarifies. “A lot of this comes from ballroom culture and very scrappy beginnings,” she says. “The fashion created in the basements of dungeons, where dominatrixes fasten stuff they bought at Home Depot onto a leather vest, eventually makes it to the big fashion houses and then it trickles down to the high street. In that sense, there’s always going to be a way for you to express your sexuality.”

“When you see society becoming more conservative and aggressive, people working in fashion and art want to be a reaction on the other side”

It’s also no coincidence that wearable sex toys are steadily gaining popularity now. With a wave of conservatism crashing across the world in the last few years, sex is increasingly under attack by politicians and Big Tech alike. Thanks to algorithmic guidelines, you can barely say the word “sex” on social media without getting shadowbanned. The surveillance state has gobbled up porn, too, with the UK’s Online Safety Act making it all but impossible to access sites with even a hint of adult content unless you provide age ID to some anonymous third-party company.

With consensual adult sex being essentially outlawed in digital spaces – and under constant threat IRL – we’re grappling for new ways to declare our horniness in public, so it makes sense that fashion would become more overtly libidinous. This sociopolitical shift could also explain why wearable sex toys are gaining traction. “When you see society becoming more conservative and aggressive, people working in fashion and art want to be a reaction on the other side,” says Lust.

We know what you’re thinking: aren’t Gen Z famously celibate these days? That’s beside the point, explains Gustafsson. Wearable sex toys might be a performance of sexuality, but they don’t “necessarily mean people are engaging in more sex”, nor are they an invitation for anyone to sexualise the wearer. Instead, they are a clear sign that the tides of sexual empowerment are turning because, finally, women and queer people are in control of their sexuality. “Wearing sex toys is about taking up space,” says Gustafsson. “These toys mean showing up in the world as an autonomous sexual being, and it’s a brave thing to take up space sexually in a world that doesn’t always celebrate that.”

That’s the thing: what gives us pleasure and our personal style are two things no one else can dictate, so it makes perfect sense the two are becoming more merged than ever. “We have this need to show the world who we are and what we believe in and that pleasure is important to us,” says Lust. “Pleasure is more than something frivolous. Pleasure is resistance, taking care of ourselves, feeling good in our bodies, and being aware.” What better way to embody that than through what you choose to wear? It’s for you and for no one else… unless you want to share.