Bondage Gear, Straight From Karachi

Ever wonder where S&M bondage gear—whips, straps, masks, assless pants—is made? No? Well, you should have. The Times has a fascinating video piece about a company in Karachi, Pakistan that manufactures fetish wear and exports it to the West. (None of it looks quite as fanciful as the colorful, strange lingerie coming out of Syria). "Most of our customers are from New York," one of owners says. "Seventy percent are Democrats." Natch.

Two brothers from a poor family started the company, AQTH, in 2001. It now makes a million dollars a year, employs dozens, and only rarely runs into trouble with the devout Muslims who live next door. Though AQTH is flourishing, manufacturing "the famous spanking skirt" in Karachi ("it has all the back open for the spanking, while lovemaking," one of the brothers explains) is a little more complicated than manufacturing other less outré leather goods might be. The owner's wives haven't been told what the company produces and many of the employees don't know—or don't want to know—what they're making. One man thinks the sex swing he's crafting is actually a black-leather, silver-studded beach chair.

That said, the brothers are refreshingly unembarrassed about their product line, equating the items to the "spices of sex." One of their sales executives, a 25-year-old woman, refuses to pick a favorite piece, admonishing sternly that she has several. "I have a desire to wear some of the items," she goes on to say, "but not all of them."