Vuitton’s version strips the item of its leather-scene implications: now constructed from thick fabric, it looks like the kind of safety harness used by frazzled parents to control roaming toddlers. What we didn’t anticipate was that a year later, the harness – now co-opted by Louis Vuitton – would become the accessory of choice for straight male stars looking to up their red-carpet game. The gesture was applauded, a handful of thinkpieces were written, and Rippon went back to wearing more conventionally chic skinny suits at public events. The harness is the uniform of the once underground gay leather bondage scene, a richly coded symbol of male sexual submission and control refashioning it as mainstream formalwear before an audience of millions was an explicit statement that LGBT sexuality is no longer something to be hidden or marginalised.
Real deal … Adam Rippon in a harness and tuxedo at the 2018 Oscars Photograph: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
