The brand name is an abbreviation of Ausrie Felice,  the real name of its owner, a Lithuanian artist, model and designer who has lived in the UK for many years and is currently based in Peterborough.

Her trademark designs are eyecatching, glamorous bodycon garments, many decorated in gothic/rock/ heavy metal style with inverted crucifixes, iron crosses, ankhs and other appliqué symbols, not to mention a liberal sprinkling of studs and chains.

The Ausrie Fel designs you’ll see in this article’s galleries, in her Etsy store and on her Facebook and Instagram pages, include some items made in multiples. But one-offs are the designer’s primary focus.

“I love making one-offs to offer people a chance to have something unique they cannot get anywhere else,” she says. “This is what I love doing most as it keeps me creative and happy as an artist. 

“I find it really hard to concentrate when I have to remake the designs I’ve previously made and offer them as ‘made to order’ as it doesn’t excite me at all. However, it’s good for business to have that option.”

She models and photographs a lot of the clothes herself — two jobs for which, it must be said, she is well equipped — and works with a variety of other models and photographers sympathetic to her aesthetic.

And as for the pronunciation of her name, she explains, “the first syllable is like ‘mouse’ without the ‘m’, and the second is pronounced ‘ria’, as in Austria”. Got it? Good!

I tell her that when I Googled ‘Ausrie’, practically every search result referred to her or her label. So using her own name for her business turns out to have been a great choice for search engine optimisation.

I ask her how advantageous she has found this to be.

“I haven’t given it much thought to be honest,” she says. “Lots of people are having a hard time spelling it correctly, ha-ha, but personally I love it since I wanted to call my line under my actual name.”

It turns out that her decision about where in the UK to base herself was equally without artifice. She didn’t actually travel more than a thousand miles from Lithuania with the specific intention of setting up a latex label in the wilds of East Anglia.

“I’ve relocated about 13 or 14 times since moving to the UK due to various circumstances in my life,” she explains.

“Peterborough wasn’t a place I was instantly drawn to move to, but it just happens my cousin lives here in a place by herself, so she invited me. I’ve only been living there since spring 2018.”

Reading her bio on Facebook, which is short but still about 500 percent more detailed than most latex

Organised by legendary Munich party brand SubRosaDictum, Avantgardista 2018 will again use the main day (Saturday) of its three-day programme to combine a ten-hour alt-fashion fair and runway show at Munich’s Kohlebunker venue with an edition of the organiser’s famous Space Intruders fetish party right next door.

Avantgardista launched last year as a new concept in fetish fashion events. The idea was to showcase alternative clothing and accessory designers to the fashion-conscious German public (and especially those from the wealthy Munich area) in an artistic, stylish and non-threatening way.

It would distance itself from the usual type of fetish fair, market or expo, by creating a brightly-lit ‘exhibition’ environment in which designers were encouraged to display a few of their most eye-catching pieces as works of wearable art, more or less.

This space (in which the fashion shows would also take place) was christened the Showroom to emphasise the idea of an elegant room in which sales could be made and orders taken, but without the crowded clothes rails and cluttered tables more often associated with fetish fairs.

EXHIBITING DESIGNERS UP 50%

This year’s event will feature more than 30 designers (a 50 percent increase on last year) and a model contingent that has already topped 130 and is still growing.

Extra space for the increased number of exhibitors will apparently be created by liberating the ‘backstage’ area used as the dressing room last year. This year’s dressing space will, we hear, be ‘under canvas’.

Latex fashion will be well represented at Avantgardista 2018, along with garments in other fetish fabrics including vegan leather.

There’ll also be a substantial choice of accessories on display, from shoes, boots and gloves to headpieces and jewellery.

Unsurprisingly, a substantial number of the participating labels are German, as before. But as the organiser correctly anticipated, the second edition of Avantgardista has also attracted considerably more international names. 

Foreign brands include both the USA’s ExxEss Latex (invited back after their 2017 appearance) and Kurage from Japan — two latex labels that have had massive impacts on the catwalks of major European fetish events in recent years.

There are also four UK brands participating — up from just one last year.

There is a change of partner hotel for the Avantgardista 2018 weekend, with the three-star Motel One München Parkstadt-Schwabing replacing last year’s Leonardo Royal.

The Motel One is considerably closer to the Avantgardista venue (just two stops on the u-Bahn) and the €79 per night room rates should be a bit more accessible for those on a budget.

The change of hotel also means that Friday night’s Meet&Greet, which took place in the Leonardo’s bar last year, moves this year to the Kohlebunker where the main Avantgardista event is held.

This move also coincides with another innovation: on Friday the Showroom will open at 7pm for three hours, prior to the main Showroom day on Saturday. 

The Meet&Greet will run from 8pm on Friday in the same space, providing an opportunity to mingle with designers, models, organising team members and other participants in a casual atmosphere.

NEW TIMES FOR SATURDAY

In another programme change, Saturday’s Showroom at the Kohlebunker will open two hours earlier, at midday, and close at 10pm, when the after-party starts.

Exhibitors will doubtless welcome not having to staff their stands for two hours after the start of the party! 

The fashion shows in the Showroom are due to start at around 7pm. They’ll be presented again by the bilingual team of Fräulein Katzentanz and Ian Dutton, who did such a sterling job last time.

At the moment we don’t know how many of the 30+ participants will actually appear on the catwalk, or how many individual shows there’ll be. 

But even with some pairing-up of clothing and accessory labels, there’ll almost certainly be more shows than last year. 

However, if the show schedule is as tightly organised as it was in 2017, a decent pace should still be achievable, especially if the time given to onstage introductions can be shortened a bit.

We love MCs Ian Dutton and Fräulein Katzentanz, but one intro per three labels rather than one for every individual label might be worth considering.