Michael Pierre Has The Gift of Gab for Garb

(Originally Published January 5, 2022)

It’s difficult to predict social media. Even the best-planned ad campaigns can land flat, but a random guy longboarding can launch a decades-old song to the top of the charts. Michael Pierre, owner of MisterPierreFashion.com, knows a little something about how unpredictable and fortuitous it can be to have a social media post blow up.

“August 10th. I won’t forget that date forever,” he says, recalling the first time something he posted to TikTok took off.

Michael’s business partner, Randall, had been encouraging him to use TikTok more, which is tricky considering what they sell. He can’t describe it on the app without engaging in algospeak. “We are custom tailors for corn stars and quinky people.”

On August 10th, he decided to answer someone’s question about a leather bracelet that transforms into a pair of cuffs, as well as a collar. The product is produced by an independent artisan, Luke, but sold through the website.

I asked Jam [one of the designers and models for the site], “Hey, listen, can I just set up this tripod real quick and take this off and put it on your wrists and just show people the worst recorded TikTok I have ever made.”

He meant it to be a simple throw-away post to satisfy Randall. “You can hear my phone vibrating cuz I left the damn vibration on for this 42-second clip. Somebody was texting me if I was gonna head out to the bar.”

On that day, he wasn’t exactly in top form. “Full disclosure, I was hungover as shit.”

He shot the video, posted it, and went to the bar for a bit of the hair of the dog. While Michael was getting his drink on, the internet worked its magic. About an hour later, his phone started beeping and wouldn’t stop. “I went from 8,000 followers to 12,000 followers over that weekend.”

Since then, the account has only grown. It’s now nearing an audience of 68,000, partly because of Michael’s presence and personality. He’s a fast talker, which is helpful when you have three minutes to fit everything in one TikTok.

“I’ve had a lot of spoken word experience, and I’m actually able to speed things up quite a bit, even to the point of being accused that I’m speeding up my videos.” He learned to speak fast when he was in the Orlando spoken word scene, something he started because of his anxiety and stage fright. “When I felt like I had something to be afraid of, my first instinct was to conquer that fear. I am a very defiant person. I can do all things through spite, which strengthens me.”

Though he’s been in the kinky fashion industry for twelve years, his talents lie more in talk than tailoring. “I can run a mean straight stitch, but thanks to my staff, I haven’t had to touch a sewing machine in a long time. As a matter of fact, they forbid me from doing so because I’m so out of practice.”

While he does come up with the occasional design, such as the idea for the Tailor Flogger he wields in many of his videos, he leaves most of that to people like Jam. “Jam’s the real driving mechanism around here.”

The Family Business

How does one become a kinky clothier? For Michael, it’s been a strange journey that started with asking his mother for a job. In 2010, he hit a rough patch and struggled financially after a divorce.

When Michael turned to Mama Pierre for help, he didn’t understand what he was getting into. “She’d started her own garment business. And then, about a year later, I came along, and I needed a job.” He knew she was making clothing for dancers out of her home. “I thought she was making ballet dresses for kids.”

She needed help shipping out an ever-increasing volume of orders. Michael told her he was willing to do anything, “Even if it means helping you ship out fucking ballet dresses. I remember her menthol came up to her mouth, and she was like, ‘Oh, honey. We don’t make ballet clothes.’”

Even though the business Michael joined was about a year old, it wasn’t Mama Pierre’s first foray into the more salacious side of the fashion industry.

“My mother got her start in the kinky fashion business by being a teenage runaway and making string bikinis for strippers in the 1960s.” She would dumpster dive for fabric scraps from local fashion houses and craft stores. “She had a little home sewing machine at this house she was squatting in. So, she would make string bikinis and take them down to Orange Blossom Trail.” Orange Blossom Trail had a lot of strip clubs but only a few clothing shops.

“She was a 13-year-old kid walking in with a fistful of string bikinis and walking out with a fistful of cash.”

Between that and when Michael asked her for a job, she bounced around between solo ventures in everything from publishing newspapers to designing websites to drop shipping sex toys.

It was a chaotic life, especially for her children.

Mother thought it was a little bit cumbersome to be taking kids to and from school every day. That got in the way of her entrepreneurial desire. So, she pulled me and my sister out of school and registered us as homeschool students, then just like faked and Christmas treed our annual exams and just never educated us at all. So, I kind of learned to learn on my own since fifth grade.

Eventually, Mama Pierre shipping out sex toys and catsuits would bring her back to tailoring sexy clothes.

In the perpetual dissatisfaction of my entrepreneurial mother, they started taking too long to ship out items to her customers. So, she hired some people off Craigslist, leveraged some credit cards, got her first sewing machines, and without having any knowledge of how to sew the stuff, she started her own garment business.

While the experiences from Mama Pierre’s various solo endeavors would help start her kinky fashion business, she still lacked specific skills. “My mother has always been a lone-wolf entrepreneur, and this was the first time she had to work with people. And because, at the time, I spoke my mother and I spoke people, I started translating.”

Michael became the production manager “because she was always running a very rocky establishment, in terms of turnover and being able to meet and set reasonable deadlines and just general personnel management.”

For seven years, he put out fires, many of which resulted from Mama Pierre’s personality. She wanted to run everything, even when someone else was better suited for the job. She attempted to learn patternmaking herself and then asked Michael to fire the pattern designer.

“Her idea of presentation and platform was becoming very stale. No new designs were getting introduced. It became about her maintaining control in an ever-changing world.” Her attempts at maintaining control cost the business. “When my mother took over pattern making, returns and exchanges increased by 20%.”

Thankfully, Michael could see the disaster on the horizon. “Little did mother know I was faking the payroll when I kept the fashion designer and paid them in secret.”

But that was a band-aid on a bullet hole. “My mother was not adapting to an ever-changing world of gender fluidity.”

Especially given the niche they were operating in, her attitude towards the LGBTQIA+ community hindered the business. “My mother couldn’t quite grasp the nomenclature of sensitivity and couldn’t reserve her shock at the customer’s requests or their situation.”

In 2015, they started Mister Pierre Fashion. “We figured we’d spin off the clothing into its own sub-brand and have a direct fetish clientele appeal” without “compromising the core vanilla clients my mother’s company had.” They gave it Michael’s name because “I was more out in the field and getting progressively more in-depth with the kinky community.”

Eventually, Mama Pierre’s choices started to tank the business. Michael was taking money he earned through renting out rooms in his home to cover the payroll. In 2017, it was time for him to part ways with Mama Pierre.

I had a great core staff at that time that I had found — that I was in direct charge of. And I told them it’s costing me money to work here. I gotta go do something else. And they said, “Well, wait. We’ll have to work directly for your mother. Fuck that. We’re coming with you.” And we all just kind of took Mr. Pierre Fashion with us.

The departure led them to name a spin-off line of men’s swimwear Mutiny. Understandably, the decision to leave further fractured Michael’s relationship with his mother.

“At the start of the pandemic, we really tried to reconnect because mortality was ever present on everyone’s mind. We were doing okay there for a little while.”

But the divisions in their relationship ran a little too deep to repair.

I started doing therapy, and trauma recovery, because when you get old enough, you realize something bad happened, you want to get into the shop, and you want to make sure that you’re gonna be okay. And that’s when I started to unpack a lot of things.

Then one of the core staff who followed him out the door was taken by fast-moving cancer.

Rhonda Walker was a master tailor of 50 years. She was 65, the same age as my mother, and had been tailoring since she was 15. All of a sudden, we had this person on staff who was so capable, so skilled, so masterful, but also a mom herself. And she kind of instantly became our surrogate mother.

Losing a founding member was hard on the entire organization. “She was our first fabricator who fired up a machine at this new company, and she believed in us, and she really put herself out there to come with us.”

Rhonda’s death sparked conversations that didn’t end well.

“My mother and I were attempting conversations about emotional ownership, and we had a big personal falling out.”

Hanging On By A Thread

While leaving his mother’s company was best in the long run, it wasn’t easy. The business struggled to gain ground. At the beginning of 2019, things were tight. “At that time, I was living on a pair of panties a day.” After making sure the staff and the bills were paid, Michael was left with maybe $30 to live off of.

When the pandemic hit, “We shifted everything over to making face masks.” In the end, they sold around 3,000 masks at $20 a piece. Each person sewing was getting a piece rate for the masks. “All of my operators made life-changing money at the start of the pandemic.”

The shift required a small investment from a business partner, but “Next thing you know, I am trying to find all the muslin and cotton in this town.” While many other businesses making masks had supply chain issues, Michael and his crew maintained steady production. “All of my resources from the G-string and all the kinky clothing kept me in contact with all the suppliers who could actually still find elastic.”

But another shift in the pandemic economy returned the clothier to their kinky roots: The OnlyFans revolution. Porn production and consumption rose during the pandemic.

“All of those people needed a specialized hook to keep their new audience interested, and so a lot of them turned to kink.” And no matter the body size, shape, or gender of the performer, Mister Pierre Fashion was happy to provide.

One of the most significant departures from when they were operating out of Mama Pierre’s house is that Mister Pierre Fashion is much more welcoming to people falling outside cisheteronormative binaries or what the broader fashion industry considers an acceptable body type.

The majority of my clients are people that exist within inches outside of those realms of the standard that they [the fashion industry] want to apply. When you’re trying to feel your best and look your best and just be part of a scene and live your fantasy off the rack, binary options are not gonna be accommodating.

And Michael, who battles his own issues with body dysmorphia, knows what it’s like to not fit the narrow standards.

Being able to find out that you can be accommodated is so heartwarming because this fashion industry just wants to break your heart. They want you to comply with their vision of beauty, and they always want you to be dissatisfied, so you’ll always feel like you need something. The only difference between somebody being accommodated and not accommodated could just be a matter of two seams, and nobody sees themselves between the seams.

Though the journey is ongoing. It’s only recently that Michael had an epiphany about a fashion practice that has come to be known as the fat tax—charging larger customers more for clothing.

“I looked at the hypocrisy of it. I became disgusted with myself. I had to look at the ridiculousness of it because if I’m charging $25 extra for a larger customer, why am I not charging less for a smaller customer?”

If potential customers need clarification on sizing, they can contact Mister Pierre’s Fashion for a free consultation. Michael is proud of his company’s work in perfecting Zoom sizing consultation since the beginning of the pandemic.

Size isn’t the only place where Mister Pierre Fashion seeks to accommodate its clientele. The store doesn’t carry stock, and everything is custom-made. Any piece of clothing can be made for any gender or body type. “I sell more dresses and women’s style underwear and bikinis to AMABs than I do to AFABs.”

And there’s no shock when it comes to custom orders. “As long as everybody’s a consenting adult, I judge no one, and I have no shock barrier that you have to pass through.” He’s seen it all.

“One client wanted to simulate AFAB-style urination, and we designed a pair of underwear that could accommodate that. That’s a regular client that had the specific desire and wasn’t going to be able to find that design anywhere else because nobody’s willing to apply the technical complexity with the personal complexity. We are here to accommodate lifestyles for people in transition and people that are discovering kink.”

Mister Pierre Fashion makes custom orders for anyone of any gender or size out of their many colors of spandex gloss vinyl. “It offers the look and feel of latex while remaining hypoallergenic and doesn’t require the polishing or the lubricants like latex clothing.”

Until people understand on a more broad level what AMAB and AFAB mean, I offer clothes in male-body-style and female-body-style sizing. If you’re an AMAB, you’re gonna be a little boxier in the waist. You’re not gonna have that curve in at the waist that most AFAB clothing is designed for. Check my chart and order your male-body-style sizing. You’re gonna get your dress, and it’s gonna fit like no dress you’ve ever worn. And if it’s your first dress, I’m so proud of you!

While the business and TikTok platform are doing much better than they were pre-pandemic, Mister Pierre Fashion still faces challenges.

They recently gained a business partner who wants to promote Mutiny Swimwear, which is designed primarily for the gay male demographic. “They gave us a big chunk of money to advertise with. We cannot spend a dime of it.”

When they try to put ads on social media, “We are instantly flagged, unable to sponsor a post on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.”

It isn’t that Michael is stubbornly refusing to accept that social media won’t carry ads for a kinky clothing company. It’s hard to tell if and when something will be deemed a violation of community guidelines. “I go on TikTok to Andrew Christian, the number one designer of gay men’s swimwear in the United States, if not the world. Their models are wearing jock straps and making out in a sponsored ad.”

As Moxie Rose said, the moderation on TikTok is inconsistent. Like her, Michael isn’t upset because a sexualized underwear ad exists on the platform but that the rules aren’t applied evenly. Though he does have a theory about why.

“You can buy your way out of sensitivity jail to an extent. Andrew Christian’s ads are always approved. My ads, which are tame, are denied on every platform.”

He also has some insight into how content moderation works on the platform.

My business partner’s son used to be an at-home moderator for TikTok, and he says it just depends on who you get and what time of day and if they’ve had their coffee or if they’ve been through enough shit to actually feel approving of something. It’s a very arbitrary panel.

To advertise, Michael is taking notes from many of his clientele, the OnlyFans models.

“We have to get through it by actually not presenting the product but presenting the presence of who produces it.”

It’s not the only inspiration he’s taken from OnlyFans. When you buy something from the store’s website, he’s implemented a tipping stricture for the models showing off the items.

“To my knowledge, no other fashion platform does that where you can tip their models.” And customers have been pretty generous with the tips. “Jam makes a decent cut of all these secret wrist cuff sales because people are adding on tips for the model.”

This kinship with OnlyFans models is growing every day.

We’re considering becoming the first fashion brand to have a content channel because all these models are out there wearing my stuff anyway. It gets my fashion up there because maybe OnlyFans is the last place I can advertise it.

Though he’s also working on an affiliate program with some of the more established names in independent porn production, as well as influencers and cosplayers. He’s hopeful that these models can show off his products for him.

When fans of these models see the products they can find for themselves at Mister Pierre Fashion, they can use the model’s affiliate code for a discount, and the affiliate gets a cut of the sale. (If you’re interested in signing up to be an affiliate, Michael asks that you contact him via the website.) “Four or five good posts, and I could epically explode an audience.”

But Michael is aware that the move carries risk. “Right now, I’m sliding right in between the line of I am seen by viewership, somewhat not noticed by platform.”

I’m now financially somewhat stable for the first time in five years, and it’s because of the social media platforms, and it’s a constant fear that we live in that we’re gonna say the wrong thing and instantly be de-platformed because to me, that represents economic violence.

He borrows that terminology and line of thinking from another TikTok creator and sex worker, Juicy Pomma, who talks about how difficult it is for sex workers to maintain the social media presence they need to work and survive.

But if he can navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of audience attention and platform scrutiny, he could open up new markets for his products.

Michael’s expansion plans go beyond a wider audience.

Right now, our big growth platform for 2023 is going to be taking on more independent artisans, like Luke and April, who makes the Tailor Flogger. I have an operator, Samantha. She does corsets for Ren fares. It turns out that for a corset, you don’t need a lot of fabric in between the boning. So, I think we found something to do with our fabric scraps that are too small to even make a men’s G-string.

Another independent artist is ready to introduce a new product line. “We’re about to boldly go into some products that have not been put in leather before.” He hopes this new partnership will live long and prosper.

He’s looking forward to continuing to act as “the creative person’s financial support extrovert.”

It’s been 12 years of representing the skills and talents of really great creative people that I seem to have an inexplicable ability to find and amass. I am just in awe of everything they manage to pull off every day and the brilliance and the creativity.