Bizarre: A Fashion Fantasia (A Complete Set, Nos. 1 – 26)
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20.5cm x 13cm. 25 volumes (34-128 pages each), black and white illustrations. Illustrated saddle-stapled wrappers.
A complete set of the foundational fetish magazine of the 20th century. Spanning 26 issues (with 15/16 being a double issue) Bizarre was highly influential and set the standard for fetish publishing to date. Coutts influence can be seen in the works of Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew, and in Leonard Burtmans Exotique. Created and with the first 20 issues edited (and illustrated) by John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902-1962), better known by his pseudonym John Willie. Coutts was a British Singaporean illustrator later based in North America via Australia, where he lived and worked in Brisbane and Sydney from 1926 to 1945. It was in Australia that Coutts began his fetish art and photography, ingratiating himself in the shoe fetish scene, producing countless photographs and illustrations distributed via the networks of local fetishists, and marrying his second wife and model, Sydney lass Holly Anna Faram. Numerous photographs (and likely artworks) from this time (and of Holly) are represented in the early issues.
Publishing a high quality fetish magazine had long been Coutts dream. If not for the outbreak of WWII putting stop to his plans the first issue of Bizarre would likely have been published in Australia in 1939 (No. 1 not appearing until 1954). Alas. After a short stint in the Australian Military Forces, in 1945 Coutts moved to North America and shortly after the first published issue (No. 2) became a reality. Though Holly stayed in Australia, Coutts did take with him the influence of the early 20th century underground Australian sexual sub-cultures that had shaped his art over the preceding years. Bringing this Australian perspective to North America and working with other pioneers of the American fetish movement such as Charles Guyette and Irving Klaw, Bizarre became the fashion and fetish icon it is today.
Not without his run-ins with the law, Coutts was careful to avoid censorship, framing Bizarre as a fanzine of extreme fashion, and largely avoiding nudity, homosexuality, and extreme violence, though it is clear that the pages of Bizarre were a safe space for sexual expression. As he writes at the opening of Vol. 3, The magazine for pleasant optimists who frown on convention. The magazine of fashions and fantasies fantastic! Innumerable journals deal with ideas for the majority. Must all sheeplike follow in their wake? Bizarre is for those who have the courage of their own convictions. Conservative?–Old fashioned?–Not by any means! And an audience was found, with large sections of most issues devoted to correspondence alongside his illustrations of Sweet Gwendoline and other high-heeled, corseted, and leather adorned creations and photographs of real women of the same. Coutts featured Bettie Page on the cover of No. 14, Marilyn Monroe appears inside No. 23, and other starlets of the era make cameos.
After 20 issues he sold the magazine to an anonymous associate and moved to LA, shortly after he was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and died. Under the new editorship Bizarre lasted another 6 issues before folding in 1959.
Single issues are scarce and full sets are extremely rare. No institutional holdings of a complete set. OCLC shows 11 holdings, though only 9 can be confirmed, of those 8 are for holdings of only one of two issues. The University of Chicago with the only significant holding, though still incomplete.
Nos. 2, 4, and 5 being 1952-54 reissues, printed with the original post-war scarcity paper notice. Most Near Fine with only light shelf and handling wear. Most with price stamp or manuscript price or issue number in ink to wrappers. Nos. 4 and 6 with some creasing and minor short tears to wrappers, 9 and 10 with rusted staples, 7 lacking the top staple but still firm, 21, 22, 23 with staple mark to fore-edge. Very Good Condition.
SOLD