Description
By the mid-1960s, publishers like Selbee Associates were producing a strange and fascinating hybrid form of underground entertainment that merged pin-up photography, fetish fashion, pseudo-European sophistication, and low-budget exploitation publishing into inexpensive digest magazines sold through mail order shops, back-of-magazine ads, newsstands, and adult bookstores. Publications like Wicked and Wanton occupied a transitional moment just before the sexual revolution fully exploded into mainstream publishing. The imagery still carries traces of 1950s restraint while simultaneously pushing toward the more explicit underground aesthetics that would dominate the 1970s.
What makes this particular publication especially fun is its unmistakable “space-age mod” visual language. The white boots, vinyl dresses, severe eyeliner, and absurd little helmet transform parts of the publication into accidental Pop Art objects. It feels less like straightforward erotica and more like some collision between Carnaby Street fashion photography, Russ Meyer camp aesthetics, and low-budget science-fiction costuming. Even the title itself — Wicked and Wanton — perfectly captures the playful, slightly ridiculous energy of mid-century exploitation publishing at its most charming.
A terrific surviving piece of 1960s fetish-fashion and underground digest culture.
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