First, there was the Golden Age of Porno. From roughly 1969 to 1984, adult entertainment gained wider mainstream approval and enjoyed lucrative capital before home video arrived and reshaped portraying and consuming sex onscreen. Then: there was the Golden Age of Bondage.
At that time, fetish media was not as easy to make and distribute by independent and "amateur" creators as vanilla porn, so from roughly the mid-1970s through the late 1990s, kinky movies and magazines enjoyed some porno chic treatment—more investment, glossier magazines, and wider reception. The Golden Age of Bondage had three major production companies: Harmony Communications (also known as Harmony Concepts), California Star, and House of Milan. But before House of Milan became a powerful woman-owned publishing empire run out of southern California, it started as a boutique clothing store operated by two friends in downtown Chicago called Futura Fashions.
In the fall of 1964, Futura Fashions opened in a high-level suite at 162 N. State. It was the country's first explicitly fetish boutique.
There had been several overseas, especially in France, which had stores like Diana Slip and Yva Richard—the latter of which popularized the studded steel cone bra. Domestically, many makers supplemented their income with secret lists of fetish clientele, like costumers who worked with theater and circus performers, as well as manufacturers of items such as boots and heels, dog clothing and accessories, and horse rid.