reviews

Review (& Photos!): Aslan Leather TG Chest Harness

Last year, Carrie Grey, creator and owner of Aslan Leather, custom built me one of his leather TG Chest Harnesses. I’ve worn it a few times over the past year, like at IMsL and to a couple of smaller play parties, but just this month I wore it to Folsom Street Fair—and whoa that was quite the experience!—with rife and his dog.

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I really don’t like crowds, or hot weather, so being in an extremely crowded blocked-in couple city blocks on a sunny day was not my ideal situation. But it was really fun to see so many kinky people in one place. Fascinating, really. (I particularly liked Vivian Fu’s photo essay of this year’s Folsom.) We eventually made it to the women-and-trans area, and then promptly camped out and didn’t leave that space until we were ready to head back to Oakland. I liked their gender policy: the women-and-trans tent included anybody who does identify as a woman, has identified as a woman in the past, or will identify as a woman in the future. Clever, I thought.

I got a lot of compliments on the Aslan Leather chest harness. It’s hot and comfortable and unique for someone with a chest like mine (36DD) to be wearing something like that. I left it over my binder and tee shirt all day, but had it as a possible option to wear it bare chested.

Here’s the Aslan description:

This is box title
Ever wish you could wear a chest harness out to a party or event without a T shirt underneath? ASLAN’s new TG chest harnesss is designed to function like a binder and a chest harness. The 3- 4″ wide leather chest strap can effectively flatten up to a C cup chest. The harness pictured has a 4″ wide strap. This harness is made with comfortable heavy weight glove leather, wich allows you freedom of movement for all types of play situations, and because it’s an ASLAN you can be sure it is guaranteed for life!

To order please provide the following measurements: Chest, cup size (if applicable), height. This is a custom piece made to order so please remember to include your measurements.

Please note! The measurements part is important. When I wrote to Carrie requesting this piece, I gave him my measurements, but I was wrong. Very wrong. I gave him old measurements that I thought were accurate, but did not account for the weight I have recently gained (lots of which, let’s be honest, ends up in my chest). That sucked—the first binder he built for me didn’t fit, and he had to go back and basically remake the whole thing.

Don’t send the wrong measurements. Get someone who knows how to measure bodies for outfitting well to measure you, and get a current measurement.

Carrie snapped a few photos when I tried it on in the Aslan studio in Toronto last fall:


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I kept hoping to wear it during a photo shoot and get more better photos of it, but I haven’t had many (any?) photo shoots since I picked it up (oh except for that one with Meg Allen, but we were taking professional shots and not really kinky ones, which is why I didn’t wear it then). I’d still like more better photos of me in it, but I don’t want not having the perfect photo to hold me up in telling you about how awesome this is. And hey, the holidays are coming up, right? Don’t you need a great present for somebody in your life, or yourself?

I like the way it looks! And it feels really good and fun to wear. I even like the way my chest looks naked underneath it. I wouldn’t have expected that.

Thank you, Aslan Leather & Carrie Grey! Pick up your very own Aslan Leather TG Chest Harness over on Aslanleather.com.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

5 thoughts on “Review (& Photos!): Aslan Leather TG Chest Harness”

  1. rife says:

    Mmmm. Sir. <3
    You forgot to mention it totally makes me purr and go all weak-kneed and swoony-eyed every time I see you in it.

  2. Oh! I know this wasn’t the point of the post, but I absolutely adore the photo of you and Rife! It’s so sweet and loving (his focus on you), and domestic (a cute puppy!), but yet, there’s the undercurrent of “we totally do dirty wonderful things to each other….”

    Love it!

    1. jay says:

      Also a side note, I love that I’m seeing one of my favorite kink blogs commenting on my other favorite kink blog :)

    2. rife says:

      We totally *do* do dirty wonderful things to each other!
      Thank you; that’s my new favorite relationship encapsulation.

  3. Jacks says:

    So great to see a harness even I could wear – thanks for modelling, Sinclair! I had resigned myself to admiring the shiny from afar but this is gorgeous AND wearable.

  4. Erin says:

    It was a delight to see you rocking this harness at Folsom. Woof!

    I did want to mention one thing, since you had specifically commented on it:
    “I liked their gender policy: the women-and-trans tent included anybody who does identify as a woman, has identified as a woman in the past, or will identify as a woman in the future. Clever, I thought.”

    Whilst I agree with you that the wording and concept of their gender policy was clever, their gender policing was disgusting. When a group of my friends and I came in, someone was at the door asking only masculine presenting folks if they had read, understood, and agreed with the gender policy that was displayed. I thought this pick and choose based on appearances style of policing the door to be completely unacceptable. In a community that should be paying attention to how folks identify, not how they look, I would expect that if anyone was going to be asked if their gender (past/present/future) was in line with the posted sign, ALL folks who entered the space should have been asked if they identified with the policy.

    Thankfully, my lovely friends grabbed my crinoline and hauled me off my gender soapbox and back to watching the kinky fun..

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