Catsuit #2

After I got my first basic gear, I wanted to get something a little more risque. I might have gone too far, but that's getting ahead of myself.

One of the best vendors for truly fetish-specific gear is a UK based company called Cocoon. Their website is not too sexy, but they have a huge array of customization options for suits that make it a great site for going nuts. Inflatable suits, every possible sort of probe or hole, its like Wal-mart for pervs.

My first suit was great, but felt a little tame, so I went onto Cocoon's site and started playing with all their options and stuff. I went back to the site over and over again over the course of like a month, fantasizing about the utlimate bondage/play suit.

One of the first things I decided was to try a suit with an attached hood and feet. The fantasy of a more complete second-skin is very strong and even though it can be less practical, its a bit turn-on for me (and others). I debated about attached hands as well, but opted against it. The feet are pretty simple and hard to screw up, but there are a lot of options in terms of hoods. Cocoon offers lots of hood choices, some very cool. I ended up selecting an open-face hood for this suit.

The think in retrospect, the open-faced hood was a mistake. An open-faced hood has all the downsides of an attached hood without the real feeling of enclosure, bondage, or anonymity of a more closed hood. I'm not sure what I was thinking, maybe shaving a few $$ off the price? Anyway, I would recommend if you go with a hood, go all the way, or skip it and add your own.

Another downside of an attached hood is that its not compatible with shoulder zips (from most vendors, anyway). So I had to go with a back zip.

One thing Cocoon offers that most vendors do not is a big array of very kinky add-ons to suits. I found the idea of a suit with lots of "plumbing" to be very exciting, so I wanted to try some options here. I think most of these worked better in theory or fantasy stories than in reality.

First, I opted for an inflatable cock sheath. Basically this is a fairly standard thin black latex cock sheath from molded rubber attached to the suit, along with an outer, glued layer with an air-tight space in between that can be inflated/deflated with a bike-tire style tube. The idea is that the inflatable sheath gives both a pleasant feeling of pressure or denial of pleasure, and also is an extreme outward appearance without being nude. In reality, I found this to be more of a pain. In practice when inflated, the sheath puts pressure to push the wearer's tackle out of the inner sheath and back into the suit. The only way to make it work is to use a cock ring or something to counteract this. I think the better option would be to just get a normal sheath, or a cod-piece/hole and add your own.

The other downstairs customization option is to include some type of ass-toys in the suit. Again, this is something of a turn-on for a good many in the scene, the idea of a suit that "plugs in" to the wearer. A lot of the rubberist stories focus on such things. I opted for the relatively inexpensive option of adding an 'anal rod'. Sounds very clinical. Its basically a short dildo-type solid rubber piece, flat/smooth about 4 inches in length. Its not really a butt-plug since it has no real shape to it. It is glued to a reinforced panel near the bottom of the suit. Again, the reality falls short of the theory. Even though I got the suit custom-sized, for whatever reason, the positioning of the rod never really matched my anatomy, and because of the shape it tends to just slide out rather than stay put. To keep it positioned during a play session literally requires frequently pushing everything back in where you want it. My recommendation to others would be to, again, either go all the way or not bother. Cocoon also offers an inflatable rod which presumably could be inflated to lock itself in place better. They also offer the option of either a hole or a sheath of rubber to allow 'stuff' to be inserted externally. I think any of these three options would be better. The sheath idea sounds interesting if you want to maintain the 'total coverage' vibe but still allow for some butt play.

Ok, what's next? Color. I wanted to try something other than basic black, and the idea of a metallic color seemed cool to try. I had not seen any "pearlsheen" colors before, so wanted to see what they were like. I thought about silver or pewter (darker/grey silver), but opted for blue. Not sure why, I guess that's just where my mind was at when I finally pulled the trigger. Again, if I were doing it again, I would probably go for a silver metallic color, or perhaps a really vibrant color like yellow or orange to be as wild as possible. Blue was sort of luke-warm choice.

The material thickness for these colored/pearlsheen colors is generally limited to the lighter grades, I believe this is because the manufacturer doesn't offer them in some of the thicker grades. As soon as you opt for a thicker latex from a vendor like Cocoon, your color choices drop down to basically black, red, white, and transparent. I really wanted to try a pealsheen color, so I opted for the thinnest grade of latex.

So how did it turn out? Despite all the regrets on design, it actually still came out Ok. Not perfect and not all that I had hoped for. I found the material to be a bit too thin for my taste--I didn't realize, since my first suit was a mid-range weight, how different the thinner rubber would be. It is nice and light, but when pulled over the body, has a bit more tendency to create little folds, rather than lying smooth and flat. I like a suit best when it can achieve a totally smooth look over the body, and this was harder to do. And the thin latex does a bit less to shape the wearer, and there is less of a feeling of hands/pressure all around the body, which is arousing in and of itself.

The attached feet were a bit of a pain when donning the suit - air gets caught in the closed foot as the legs go in, so a bit of work is involved to push the air back up the leg. The fit overall was pretty good, particularly the legs and arms were perfect. The torso was a little long, I think. Might have been my measurements; not sure. That's a hard measurement to take when doing a bespoke garment. I'd recommend if you are measuring torso length for a suit, try to err on the smaller size, since smaller/stretched is a better mistake than longer/loose/bunched up. With the torso too long, the "seat" tends to drop with lots of motion, which is decidedly not sexy. The torso length might have contributed to the mis-positioning in the butt-toy department, too.

The back-zip was OK, I still prefer the shoulder zip, but it works. The vendors never seem to include a zipper pull like you'd find on a wetsuit, so plan ahead if you want to self-dress.

(In a pinch, grab a shoelace or something. My best zip pulls come from taking convention badge holders necklaces which usually are like long thick shoelaces with little metal spring clips on the ends, perfect! You owe me for that tip... )

The color was good -- but also felt more green/grey than blue. It was a nice change from black, either way.

So the verdict at the end of the day, I can't blame Cocoon for making the suit I requested, I think I should have either been more practical or less practical about the design of the suit. It could have turned out more as a functional play suit with a few cool options, or I could have gone all the way and had a full tailored bondage hood, inflatable plug, cod-piece, etc. I would definitely recommend that folks avoid specifically the options mentioned above as being a bit impractical.

The construction of the suit was very good. I've had it for quite some time now. While it doesn't see as much action as my basic black, it has not had any maintenance problems to date. I ended up cutting off the outer part of the inflatable front sheath myself with scissors, so now its just a standard molded cock sheath which is more practical. I also cut some tiny holes into the attached feet to make it a bit easier to avoid air pockets. I do like the feeling of the attached feet, I sort of wish I had opted for attached hands, at least on one suit, just to try it out.

Cocoon is definitely the go-to vendor if you want to get a wild tricked-out playsuit. I have not seen another site yet with as many crazy options. I would recommend if you use them, either go all out, or opt for just a more basic design with off-the-rack sizing. Their custom-size service doesn't seem so accurate that its worth bothering with unless the suit is already a pricey one.

Hopefully this advice can help others avoid a similar "sophomore slump". But again, nothing against Cocoon, they do good work and will make whatever suit you ask them for, so beware your own desires.

www.cocoon1.com


Blue metallic suit from Cocoon