While you’re waiting, there are a couple of answers that might interest you in this thread by /u/yst, /u/annalspornographie, and /u/dunkeykung:

• How far back in history do BDSM and other forms of kink go? In that thread, only /u/yst talks about that aesthetic in particular, and traces it to the post-War gay “Leather Scene”, and that the aesthetic had definitively crossed over into heterosexual BDSM circles by at least 1972. I think that’s a fairly late date.

I think that’s only part of the story, because see also:

• What are the origins of latex clothing and why did it become sexualized? In that thread, ptupper argues that the transition happened between the wars, tracing it to the 1920’s. Before that, they argue, fetishists had more pursed a “soft, ‘feminine’” aesthetic of “like silk and lace and fur”, but from then on “fetish generally refers to smooth, shiny, ‘masculine’ materials, like leather and rubber.” They mention there’s a theory the gas masks of WWII helped popularize rubber, but in general there’s a “transgressive appeal of socially-marginalized groups like the biker”. The why this changed happened at this particular time in this particular way is often hard to say, but part of it seems to be these things technological changes made these material cheaper and more widely available, they argue.

While I’m just linking threads, this one by /u/AnnalsPornographie presents an interesting genealogy of the modern practice:

• What is the deal with the Victorian Era and BDSM? It shows I think how what people would call BDSM today had rather different aesthetics in 19th century England.

I will just add that in the 1950’s the leather jacket had become generally associated with youth culture, particularly around cars and motorcycles and particularly because of movies like Rebel without a Cause, mentioned in a few of these comments. The leather jacket became associated with motorcycle riding because it provides some degree of practical protection from “road rash” in the event you fall off at high speeds.

Now, this fetish association was definitely present in the British punk scene (the Sex Pistol’s manager owned a fetish shop unambiguously called “Sex”) but you already had the leather jacket in the American punk scene before. The Ramones, before the Sex Pistols even formed, were all already wearing leather jackets. Look at the cover of their 1975 self titled album. This image I think isn’t recalling BDSM fetish so much as the exact same thing that 1971 play and [1978 movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grease_(film%28) Grease and the 1974-1984 television sitcom Happy Dayswas calling back to in their leather jacket wearing Fonzie character: the rebellious biker/greaser of the 1950’s. In cultural studies, they talk about nostalgia cycles. There’s the 30-year cycle, the 50-year cycle, but one of the most pervasive is the 20-year cycle. The theory is essentially what you experienced as cool as a kid where you had no agency will come back as cool when you’re a young adult (only 90’s kids will get this). I think in seeing Patti Smith’s leather jacket, we should see not so much fetish directly, but references both to the countercultural appeal of marginalized communities (from the “Bohemians” of the 19th century to the bikers of her day; there’s some suggestion that the leather jacket was also associated with sex work) and also this 20-year nostalgia cycle (Rebel without a Cause coming back).

I'm the author of A Lover's Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism, and I've been researching and blogging about this since 2005.

In my view, there are several cultural threads that go into the "black leather and spikes aesthetic" of modern S&M.

First, the colour black in clothing has a long history in clothing, being associated with power and violence. 19th century Gothics probably created the foundational links between black clothing and deviant sexuality. In Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Gray secretly collects and fetishizes nuns' habits.

Around 1920, there was a strange shift in fetishes, discussed in the literature. 19th century fetishes described by Binet, Krafft-Ebing, et al, tended to be about "soft" media like furs, lace and silk. After the Great War, it shifted to "hard", smooth media like leather, nylon and rubber. Advances in material sciences probably had something to do with this.

Also around that time, fashion took a turn towards dressing down, with simpler, unadorned silhouettes. In French silent film serials, female stars like Josette Andriot in Protea (1913) and Musidora in Les Vampires (1915) wore skin tight, black costumes of cotton or silk, which emphasized the possibilities of the unrestrained female body and separated them from existing social hierarchies.

In the '30s and '40s, leather was associated with romantic adventurer types like aviators, race car drivers, motorcyclists, and explorers. Marlene Dietrich wore a full-body, black leather flying suit in Dishonored (1931).

After WWII, some discharged military men joined biker culture, and adopted black leather jackets as an informal uniform. After the sensationalized article about the 1947 Hollister, CA incident (fictionalized into The Wild One (1953), bikers became the American outlaws, and black leather jackets became the counter-culture uniform, signifying all the forbidden things in 1950s culture, especially sexuality.

This branched out and cross pollinated in several ways.

• Gay artists like Tom of Finland further expanded this iconography, associating black leather with masculine, quasi-military homoerotics.
• Punks, who overlapped with sex workers and homosexuals, also picked up on this. Impresario/designers like Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood bridged the gap between the punk subculture and high fashion, creating outlaw chic.
• Heavy metal didn't have a look until Rob Halford borrowed the outfits of the gay leathermen he saw in London.
• Sex workers, including professional dominants, adopted leather high heels and boots both for fetishist clients and as a fashion statement.

This concoction bubbled up into the mainstream through the 70s and 80s, providing a way to gesture towards socially marginal groups like the outlaw, the soldier, the criminal, the sex worker, even the mentally ill. It really hit the mainstream with Versace's fall 1992 line of skin tight black dresses adorned with straps and buckles. Then you had high fashion designers like Thierry Mugler who really traded on fetish, creating outfits that once only existed in art by John Willie and Eric Stanton.