About Us

Dark Nature Aesthetics started in 2014, in Florida USA.

We found the available options for leather accessories and BDSM/Fetish gear at the time to be extremely simplistic and uninspired, so we decided to change this by striving for high-detail, sophisticated and elegant design, colorful artistic touch, while using only quality materials made to last decades.

Since then our goal is to provide you with some of the best BDSM/Fetish accessories and gear available!

We want you to feel POWERFUL, SEXY, and ELEGANT when wearing our products and this inspires us to keep improving our knowledge and methods every year, while becoming better at creating that empowerment you feel when you put on one of our hand-crafted pieces.

 

Vegetable-Tanned Leather

Most of our work is made using Vegetable-tanned cowhide leather. This kind of leather differs to what’s generally used in the mass market goods in a few very important ways.

1. It’s the only kind of leather that’s capable of being “wet molded/tooled” which is how we impress our original designs onto the leather. This way of doing it is very well suited for products of more artistic nature and gives a lot of flexibility and opportunities to “sculpt” the leather in a unique and lasting way. It also gives a lot of extra dimension to the piece being worked on compared to alternative methods (painting, laser engraving).
2. It breaks in well and polishes/develops patina over time. Long term durability is great and if the piece is being taken care of, by conditioning it occasionally, it will last a long time.
3. It can be dyed in a bunch of different colors. Not just flat colors either. It allows for artistic techniques and all kinds of creative ways of doing it.
4. This way of tanning leather is more environmentally friendly, and the byproducts of the process are recycled to make agricultural fertilizer.

 

Chrome-Tanned Leather

We also use Chrome-tanned cowhide leather. This is generally the “soft” kind of leather people are familiar with and we mostly use it for the inner lining of our products. It’s easier to clean and repels moisture better than Vegetable-tanned leather while remaining soft to the touch. This makes it a perfect choice for the task.

 

Solid Stainless Steel

Our hardware metal of choice is Stainless steel.

This is because we’re committed to having our products last and this extends to the strength and looks of the hardware years down the line.

1. Compared to many other options Stainless Steel has superior strength and hardness, thus it doesn’t scratch as easily and remains pristine for longer.
2. Since we use solid stainless steel there’s no coating/plating that can rub off and the color will never change.

We do offer the option to use Solid Brass instead of stainless steel in certain cases.

In future designs we plan to incorporate some aluminum pieces because of the vast design/machining capabilities of the metal. It will be used only for non-load-bearing decorative details.

 

 

Thread, Glue, and Stainless Steel Rivets

We approach our designs trying to keep them looking refined and sophisticated. Through the years since we started making leather products, we’ve slowly perfected our methods of crafting them. This is why most of our products are machine stitched using a heavy-duty polyethylene thread instead of rivets. Everything is glued in place before being stitched and this combination is extremely strong and long-lasting.

Stitching gives the piece a cleaner look overall and doesn’t distract from the leather itself, plus in certain instances it could be a stronger method of binding the leather pieces together since the force is spread out over a larger area. Most of all it gives us some extra artistic freedom to adorn our products with detail and not have big rivets cover most of the area. This is especially valid for any tight spots with a lot of detail, which we’re known to have a lot of.

The few exceptions where we do use rivets are when we feel like they add to the visual aspect of the art.

Our rivets are also made of stainless steel which is rarely seen in most leather products. Inferior metals are far more common.

 

Allergies

Some percentage of the population experiences nickel allergies and their skin becomes irritated when in contact with the metal nickel for prolonged periods of time. Even though a lot less than nickel plated hardware, stainless steel hardware still contains about 4.5% nickel in it. Our products are designed with allergies in mind and most of them have no metal-to-skin contact anywhere (another reason we prefer stitching). If you have any questions about it just email us.