Nicola Formicetti, the stylist best known for his work with Lady Gaga, has launched his new Spring/Summer 2012 collection for the Paris fashion house Mugler through the do-it-yourself porn site Xtube.

The hugely popular Xtube is best described as the YouTube of porn, where thousands upon thousands of users upload home footage of themselves engaged in a mind boggling array of sex acts. Home made porn of this kind (generally free to watch and due to its nature very democratic and diverse in its content) has been exploding across the internet (fnar) in the last 5 years or so. As popular as it is however, it still retains the cultural stigma associated with mainstream pornography, where issues of exploitation and coercion are still rife. Having a brand like Mugler use a platform like Xtube to launch a collection is a major endorsement of this newer form of porn, and a further step towards it’s validation in the mainstream.

The video itself is mildly explicit (some dick and ass but no sex) but it’s not cheap. As you would expect from a world famous fashion house, it looks beautiful, and features some great music courtesy of Nomi Ruiz (ex-Hercules & Love Affair) with her new act Jessica Six. Formicietti, in his own description of the video, says this:

I was looking at Italian New-Realist cinema and then post-that, where Fellini and Pasolini became more about myth and fantasy. At the same time I loved the idea and accessibility of pornography and that everyday voyeurism on Xtube. Fashion is always referencing pornography, so there was an element in doing this film of “cutting out the middleman”, but it’s an erotic fashion film nonetheless.

I am always interested in technology and I was particularly interested in the way that pornography drives it. It is so user friendly on a porn site like Xtube, so instantly about something you would be interested in. When you are alone you can be as free as you want, watch what you want and be who you are - you are not having your taste dictated to you like you are elsewhere. I liked the idea of people watching this film in that way.

 

 
The “Brothers Of Arcadia” clip is available to view on Xtube here. NSFW obviously.

**EDIT**

Well, it looks like that may have just been a publicity stunt, to draw attention to the new range and Xtube itself - because the video is now availbe to view (uneditted) on the much more family friendly site YouTube. Which makes stories like this one a bit redundant. How much cooler would it have been to have to force people to a porn site if they wanted to watch it? Oh well, any excuse to get Xtube and do-it-yourself porn mentioned on Dangerous Minds is worth it, I reckon. Here is the offending “Brothers Of Arcadia” clip by Nicola Formicetti and Branislav Jankie, for Mugler, in full (though it’s STILL NSFW):