An Afternoon with Betony Vernon, High Priestess of Pleasure
The Parisian expat makes deliciously functional jewelry and extols the healing powers of BDSM
On a gray and rainy day in the bustling heart of the Marais, I find myself bound to Betony Vernon. This is not a figurative statement. The American-born, Paris-based designer, clad in black satin, with her fiery red hair cascading over her shoulders, has slipped a small gold ring on my finger; the ring is attached to a chain leading to a bracelet on her milky white wrist.
“I want you to feel what it does to us,” she says, her voice husky and low.
Vernon has made a name as a self-described “sexual anthropologist” by honing in on the pleasure that we embrace and deny. The daughter of a civil-rights activist and an inventor, she grew up along the Appalachian Trail and moved to Europe in 1990, after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University. In Florence, she taught jewelry and metalsmithing for Fuji Studio Workshop; from there she decamped to Milan, where she obtained her Masters in Industrial Design and founded her first atelier. Soon she was appointed Design Director for Fornasetti, the legendary Italian house. Married to Barnaba Fornasetti, son of Piero, for over 10 years, the now single—and singular—Vernon resides in Paris, upstairs from Eden, her private playground and sanctuary.
In Eden, Vernon meets with clients for bespoke fittings and displays her jewelry and objets. Erotic paintings and sleek cabinets line forest-like walls, and a Fornasetti leopard keeps watch from the commode beside us. The atmosphere is hushed and relaxed, the color scheme of green chosen for its unisex nature. (It also brings Betony back to her earliest memories of those Virginia forests.) Reclining in a Gio Ponti chair amid her spotlit handiwork—pastel feather ticklers, necklaces that double as harnesses, bracelets that fasten you to another—Vernon twists her double-sphere massage rings around a manicured finger.
“The blue-blooded fetishist,” she says, “is a lover of fine materials.”When she first began her search for such materials, in the early 1990s, Vernon realized luxury was absent from the world of sex shops—and sexuality itself. “It didn’t really exist back then,” she says. “I felt that the sense of ritual and the sacred and the durable and the sensual was missing. That was, of course, unless you visited the leather shops for ‘the boys’ on the wrong side of town.”
“The blue-blooded fetishist,” she says, “is a lover of fine materials.”When she first began her search for such materials, in the early 1990s, Vernon realized luxury was absent from the world of sex shops—and sexuality itself. “It didn’t really exist back then,” she says. “I felt that the sense of ritual and the sacred and the durable and the sensual was missing. That was, of course, unless you visited the leather shops for ‘the boys’ on the wrong side of town.”
I didn’t realize that designing the jewelry would be a way to connect with people and discover how much hurt and trauma and abuse there is.
Vernon’s 2013 book The Boudoir Bible: The Uninhibited Sex Guide for Today, represents her mission to fill the voids where traditional love-making tomes leave off, including chapters on bondage and restraint, rope play, flagellation, male ejaculation control and anal sex, complete with quietly salacious illustrations by François Berthoud. (The Bible will be reissued this July.) And she models an almost fanatical devotion to dismantling what she calls “the pleasure taboo,” the idea that giving into ones wildest desires and fantasies in somehow wrong and unnerving, the sexual void of the sensual and the connection to be made therein.
We talk of how bondage and BDSM seemed to crop up in the fashion and advertising worlds at the turn of the 21st century: women in bathing suits tied up next to pools, no trusting partner in sight, all in order to sell alcohol or lipstick. This “aggressive sexuality” as Vernon puts it, seemed to serve no one; alas that image was there, and it was everywhere. “I design objects that when used incorrectly can be dangerous,' she explains. 'I have always felt an enormous responsibility in that regard.”
By the time she began producing what would become her trademark Sado Chic line for her Paradise Found collection—striking jewelry pieces that also function as intimate objects, such as the Lovelock harness, the O-ring and the aforementioned bracelet-ring set—she already had an impressive stable of international clients for her SFW designs, including Barneys and Liberty. The former was scandalized by her new work.
“When I showed it to the buyer in 1996, the bracelet and the ring, she didn’t like it.” She pauses, letting the chain swing between our hands. “I knew I had touched a nerve with her, and it was a sign. I had to continue doing what I was doing, and I had to do it underground, for private clients, and continue my developments secretly.” As she finishes the thought, a smile plays upon her scarlet lips.
Initially, Vernon didn’t see a way to survive solely on these erotic pursuits. Then 9/11 happened, and in its wake she saw her creations as “the only way.” She remembers thinking, “If I’m going to put anything else on this planet… it had to be something that had meaning and a purpose and could somehow do good.” She lost 20 fashion clients around the world. Most would have been terrified, but Vernon was emboldened. Her body of work and beloved objects—like the imposing leather-bound Boudoir Box, fitted with 80 pieces of her jewelry and 21 “tools” initially conceived for discretionary travel to clients—have been displayed at Somerset House, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Wintherthur, the Triennale Design Museum and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. So much for touching a nerve; Vernon has sparked a fire.
For all her focus on pleasure, Vernon has also become an unlikely advocate for wellness and healing. “I was naive in 1996,” she begins. “I didn’t realize that designing the jewelry would be a way to connect with people and discover how much hurt and trauma and abuse there is.” Her words ring all-too true in the #MeToo era, when sexual dynamics are fraught and the erotic has been largely cast aside. A certified medical hypnotist, Vernon hosts workshops using a combination of therapy and movement.
Eileen Kelly: America's Next Sex (Ed) Symbol
Censorship. Spectrums. Consent. The next sexual revolution is upon us, and she's leading it
She recalls patients being referred to her by psychiatrists who found them practically beyond repair. The “judgement-free zone” that Vernon cultivates seems like a natural way to address the more complicated—and sometimes downright terrifying—sides of love and sex.
“If I could wish one thing for people on the planet, it’s for everyone to feel good,” she says. “When you feel good, you move good, and you spread good. It’s energy.” She gestures to the room. “In Eden, we are very careful. We are careful with the planet, and we want to bring people to an understanding of their bodies, of their minds, to their relationships with themselves and others, because it is all hinged at the root of what we call our sexuality. And when your sexuality is bringing you disappointment, then there is a reason.”
She smiles. “Go deep, no skimming—that is love.”
Despite her efforts to do good and spread good, Vernon lives under the constant threat of censorship. Her advertisements for fine jewelry are banned (“They think I make toys; I don’t make toys...”) on the same platforms where the belfie reigns. She knows we are in dire need of change: “The revolution that needs to happen today is that of art, beauty, culture and love. Put down the devices and make people read; encourage them. Culture is the only way to have a revolution.”
She goes on: “We must allow these shifts to happen. I had to make decision when writing The Boudoir Bible: Am I going to talk about pleasure, or am I going to talk about trauma? I decided to talk about pleasure because pleasure wins. Overcoming the trauma means you are deciding to embrace your pleasure.” She pauses, perhaps intuiting a question forming in my mind about the relationship between healing and pleasure and pain. “Sex wasn’t enough to get people’s attention, so they turned to BDSM. It’s one thing to feel that power; it’s quite another to wield it.”
By creating her own haven, this lush enclosure made of fine materials where the senses rule and the healing can begin, Vernon has become an icon of tenacity and staying true to one’s desire, all 360 degrees of it.
“I don’t know where my path is ever taking me,” she says before we part. “I will continue to cultivate those spaces by being well. I am hungry for my life, and I am always learning.”
