Hi All

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting it. 25 years ago, on 1st April 2001, RestrainedElegance.com gained its first-ever member. I found out sitting at the pool in a motel in a dodgy bit of Los Angeles, next to the airport, relaxing after doing a shoot with Stacey Burke. It was perhaps my tenth shoot, and I’d decided to open a little website to maybe bring in a little cash to help pay the model fees, maybe a bit more camera or lighting gear. Possibly even one day enough “beer money” for a short holiday, I though.

It was a bit unexpected – the site hadn’t been meant to go live until April 4th. But the payment processor got it sorted early and the first members signed up before I even had chance to announce it. (I wish it was still that easy to get attention for a bondage website on the internet now!)

25 years later and I’m posting pictures to celebrate the anniversary shot on digital cameras whose resolutions would have seemed like science fiction back in 2001 (for video especially – we spend ten years at our Annual January production meetings talking about how to make the videos look more like the stills. Mission accomplished.) My work has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people, but many of the same of the people from that first year are still here, still supporting and (hopefully!) still enjoying elegant barefoot glamour bondage.

It’s been an amazing ride, totally unexpected, I never expected to go full-time let alone have it as my career for the next 25 years. Thank you all so much, and here’s to many more years of barefoot glamour bondage we can make together. Models, photographers and members make an unbeatable team!

Here’s some of the things we have in store for you this month:

And we’ve got a bumper crop of archives this month to celebrate as well, of course. I *think* I’ve got one
set shot in each year for the 1st April – although my record keeping has changed a lot since the early days and
camera metadata was not always set or preserved through the processing chain so I’m not 100% sure. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong!