Back in 1993, when Chelsea was the gay epicentre of New York City, Frederick Kearney and David Lauterstein met over $1 margaritas at the Break bar on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, and soon fell in love. A year later, the future husbands co-founded what would become one of the world’s most iconic gay culture brands, Nasty Pig, with David as CEO and Fred as artistic director. Initially making clothing for their friends and using David’s apartment as their headquarters, Nasty Pig opened their first store on West 22nd Street in December 1994. Early best-sellers included vinyl pants, rubber superhero tanks, NP t-shirts and rubber chaps.
Nasty Pig gear could soon be seen sported at the city’s fetish and leather bars as well as on the dancefloors of the downtown club scene. Before long David and Fred tunred their focus to the home and began making machine washable rubber bedding, which proved to be a hit at Chicago’s International Mr. Leather (IML) weekend, and continues to be one of the company’s most in-demand items, along with their NP jockstrap line. In 2003 Nasty Pig went global as it began taking international orders via NastyPig.com and the following year the brand’s instantly recognizable snout logo was birthed.
The late fashion icon Thierry Mugler was an early customer, and Lady Gaga, Frank Ocean, and Madonna are among the celebrities who have been seen in Nasty Pig over the years. In 2023, without watering down its image, the brand partnered with Nordstrom for a pop-up store at their NYC flagship location during Pride month. At last year’s Mid Atlantic Leather (MAL) event in Washington, D.C., the company did not use their convention booth to sell their products, but instead turned it into an mpox and sexual health clinic. In recognition of their efforts for the community, David and Fred were invited to the White House. Over the years, the brand has also given back by raising funds for LGBTQ+ homeless youth charity Ali Forney Center.
Launching an empowering sex positive company, with a playfully provocative name, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States was not met with universal enthusiasm from those within the community, as David Lauterstein explains to The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann in an exclusive interview as he reflects back on coming out, falling in love, and 30 years of the trailblazing queer fashion brand.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: I’d like to start by thanking you for those moments when I’ve felt my gaydar waning out in the wild and then spotted someone wearing a Nasty Pig cap, t-shirt or shorts, and then shared a knowing smile with them. I’m sure that’s something that you must get told a lot, along with some sexy stories.
David Lauterstein: “At Nasty Pig we call that a private nod in a public world. When Fred and I developed our snout logo, the intention was obviously to build a logo for the brand, but it was also so that our customers could see each other in a way that was cruisey. What’s been wonderful though, is that we’ve started to hear from our customers who live in smaller towns where they have to hide their queer identity publicly. What they’ve been saying is actually less about sex. They’ve been telling us that when they get spotted wearing Nasty Pig, or see others wearing it, it makes them feel safe. That gives me goosebumps because that’s something I never expected, that Nasty Pig would provide that feeling of, ‘I’m seen, it’s okay, and I’m not alone’. That’s been this wonderful thing that we’ve been hearing lately.”
Especially if they are living in a place where wearing something more obvious like rainbow colours might makes them feel unsafe or uncomfortable. The NP initials or the snout logo are a more coded way of expressing your identity. If you know, you know.
“Exactly, but I love that it isn’t just about, ‘Hey, let’s hook up’, it’s also about, ‘Hey, I’m here, you’re here, and it’s okay’ because queer people are everywhere.”
You’re celebrating Nasty Pig’s 30th anniversary this year which is exciting. Congratulations. It’s also hard to believe that 1994 is 30 years ago!
“Haha. I know, right?! Thanks so much, it’s been a really great year so far.”
What was it like as you and Fred set about creating a gay clothing company that had a kink and fetish vibe to it at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in United States?
“I met Fred—my first boyfriend, current husband, and Nasty Pig co-founder and creative director—back in 1993 at $1 Margarita Night at the Break on 8th Avenue in Chelsea. We went home together and I lost my virginity and my heart to him. When I came out it was a struggle. It was hard to come out of the closet back then and I came out into a world of fear. There was fear about queer identity and sexual positivity. Because of the HIV/AIDS crisis, we had adopted so much of the stigma that was placed upon us. The general vibe from leaders in our community was, ‘Don’t look at us, we’re not about a disease, we’re not about what we do in the bedroom, we’re just like everybody else’.”
“Gay men had become statuesque, we were shaving our bodies so that people would know that we didn’t have KS lesions and we went to the gym to look fit and healthy. So much of our aesthetic and our lives at that time was built around demonstrating that we weren’t sick. I looked at that and I was like, I did not work so hard to come out to feel this way. I always saw my queerness as a gift and I saw sex as part of our existence. Don’t bury the lede! I thought, if you’re my neighbour and I pretend to be this perfect little person who’s just like you and then you catch me sucking someone’s dick in my window, you’re going to hate me anyway. So I was like, we have to get people comfortable with sexual positivity again and with open about queer identity.”
“When we first started Nasty Pig we were very unpopular for a long time. People really didn’t like us and didn’t get us, even within our own community. The leather community didn’t like us because we were rule-breakers, mixing up fetish and fashion and streetwear, like wearing sneakers. But at the heart of Nasty Pig is a love story between me and Fred. It’s also about our love for our community, our love of fashion, and a love for our passion that we should celebrate ourselves and never be afraid of ourselves.”
Did you have any business mentors as you were starting out?
“None. I was a poetry major and I never took a business class in my life. I had no one around me to give me advice because so many of my queer ancestors were buried. We lost so many in the generation before so I didn’t have a lot of people to go to. My husband and I made it up as we went along and we learned by our mistakes. We both say that had we known what it was going to take we wouldn’t have done it. But if we had to do it all again in the way that we did, we would. I consider it a blessing that nobody was there telling me what it would be like because running a business is a lot of work and if you know what you’ll be up against you’ll end up not doing it.”
What was it like when you first started to see people wearing your clothes around the city?
“It was incredible and is still is to this day. When Fred and I started out in our tiny little store we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, so when a customer bought something we’d take that money and buy food. I recognized then that any person who is wearing our stuff has so many choices. People work hard for their money and they make an active decision about what they spend it on. They’re saying that of everything in the world that they could have purchased in that moment, they purchased something from Nasty Pig. That feeling of gratitude has never left me. To this day, I light up when I see people wearing our stuff because I know that that person cut through all the noise in their lives and took the time to see us and to say, ‘I want you’. So that’s still as thrilling today as it was back when we started.”
What did it mean to you to have Thierry Mugler as one of your early customers?
“My husband and I were massive Mugler fans, he was our favorite designer. So to have that man walk into our store and not just buy our stuff, but then go on to share his wisdom with us about the fashion industry wasn’t just thrilling and seal of approval, but it felt cosmic. He hung out with us at bars in New York and at IML in Chicago. He put us in his limousine and took us to the Eagle. I see life in magic and symbols and when the universe delivers something like that to you it’s both unbelievable, but at the same time I’m like, listen up, believe it and pay attention because this is magic.”
“Mugler was a master constructionist, so to hear him compliment Fred on his construction skills was such a nod to my husband’s incredible talent. Having Thierry’s support, encouragement and friendship remains one of the most thrilling things in my life. I miss him.”
What were some of the influences that went into the early years of Nasty Pig, which are maybe still with it?
“We were very influenced by New York streetwear. In terms of designers, it was Mugler, Gaultier, and Claude Montana. Designers who were very into the theatrics of fashion but still keeping it clothing. We were influenced by the art of Tom of Finland and by the pages of Inches and Honcho magazines. We were influenced by the leather scene and by the British latex scene. We had this unique, groundbreaking combination that brought in everything from hip-hop to couture to leather bars and that became our signature style, all of that wrapped up into one brand. There were queer clothing companies before us, but there wasn’t a queer brand and that was what we wanted to create by mixing all that up.”
What has your approach been to the visuals of your campaigns and using your own customers as models?
“We’ve always been inspired by our customers. Our very first photo shoot was me, two of our customers and our friend Kevin Aviance. We’ve always wanted the visuals to represent the diversity that’s been around us since day one thanks to living in New York. In New York, you can’t help but be immersed in diverse culture and we always wanted to reflect that back. We continue to use our customers as influencers because if they genuinely celebrate the brand then you feel it in the photos.”
“Anyone who I’m going to put into a Nasty Pig image needs to be a nice person. I want to know them and that they’re good people. The idea of using people we know also ensures that we’re being represented by humans who reflect our energy and not just a beautiful face who’s an asshole when they take the clothing off. There’s nothing sexy about being an asshole. Ugly is ugly. I don’t care how pretty you are you on the outside, if you’re ugly on the inside, you’re ugly!”
I love the Spring/Summer XXX 30th anniversary collection. What were your thoughts as you were creating both the clothing and marketing campaigns?
“With the clothing, you’re basically in our archives. We went back through everything that we’d made over the past thirty years to think about what we want to synthesize as we look forward. The XXX line pulls from all these different years and periods and reinterprets them. Some things we brought back from the vault exactly as they were, like the trade shorts which are made of suiting and rubber. I love those and I’m actually wearing some right now.”
“There’s also the Honcho group which uses materials we love like synthetic rubber. Then there’s our exposed mesh group which looks at mesh as this iconic queer fabric that was used in porn back in the 70s. Influences like that are always coming up in our work. We’ve also got our Rush group which is burgundy and yellow, classic high school and college sports colors.”
“The current line was about celebrating where we’ve been, but also looking to where we’re going. As far as the visuals go, we’d been working with photographer Sam Waxman since 2016. He’s very talented. I actually gave him his first job in New York and we hired him full time in December because we wanted to bring in somebody who we trusted to take us to new places for our 30th anniversary. He was like, ‘I want to capture that Nasty Pig energy that you started with, that 90s New York period of rebellion and queerness’. He wanted to tell those stories with the visuals. The photography is part of Sam’s own association with Nasty Pig and I think these are the best campaigns we’ve ever done.”
“One of the shoots was black and white as a homage to iconic queer photographers Steven Meisel and Robert Mapplethorpe, with Sam editorializing that for us and giving it a Nasty Pig spin. Sam’s an art history major and his black and white stuff is amazing. I also think our Diver group has some products in it that are really popping and I managed to rent a straight burlesque strip club in New York to shoot the visuals for that group. I love those images too. I adore Sam and all of his work for us.”
There’s often original music in the campaign videos too.
“Yeah, I’ve been putting out house music since 2010 and using it in our campaigns. I actually have 10 unreleased tracks that I’ll be putting out soon. So much of our culture is music and fashion and sex, so I wanted to put that all together.”
You’ve written a book that is being published this fall. Is it a memoir about your life and the history of the business?
“Yeah, it’s called Sodomy gods because that’s what I began to call the gods that rule me. It’s essentially a love story about me and Fred which takes place during the period when we started the company. So it’s also an origin story and a time capsule of early 90s New York. There are a lot of books written about that period, but I wanted to tell a different story. We hear a lot of tragic stories about those times, but in the midst of all that death and fear there was also this reclaiming of our identities and a fearlessness. That’s what the book is about.”
You don’t have a physical store in New York anymore, but you do pop-ups at your studio don’t you?
“I really miss interactions with my customers. Retail is very challenging seven days a week, so I don’t miss that, but I love dressing up my customers. We started the business to help people reclaim their identity and feel sexy again. Something that Mr. Muglar taught me is that fashion can be transformative. There’s nothing more powerful than the moment someone tries something on and then they look in the mirror and light up. That feeling is addictive for me. I love making people feel good. Say what you want about fashion, but it’s the only art form that we all participate in. Everyone wakes up and makes a choice about what they’re going to put on. We may not listen to music, we may not watch movies, but we all participate in fashion in some way. The pop-ups allow people to come to our studio and see behind the scenes and I get to be around the people who feed me. It goes back to that. That’s something that I never lose sight of. So we’re going to be doing more pop-ups in New York.”
By James Kleinmann
To read more about Nasty Pig and to shop the XXX Spring/Summer 30th anniversary collection, head to NastyPig.com. Follow @NastyPig on Instagram and @NastyPig on X. David Lauterstein’s memoir Sodomy Gods is available now at NastyPig.com.
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