Cruising With Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Pornhub
Fashion

Cruising With Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Pornhub

Outdoor cruising has a long history in Berlin, a subject that photographer and filmmaker Matt Lambert has long explored in his work.

Two of the city's hookup spots in particular — the lake Teufelsee and parks of Tiergarten — have intense erotic histories. It's also where Lambert returned recently to film a new video for Ludovic de Saint Sernin, the Paris-based designer known for his sensual, provocative clothes.

The film (there's a soft version and the original explicit version) features sex workers and OnlyFans stars Father Scorpio and Steven Fast (who's walked for the LdSS runway) frolicking outdoors either in the nude or in pieces from LdSS' capsule collection with Pornhub.

"We wanted to take a historical reference to these typical cruising-by-the-lake scenes that we've seen in so many gay films from the 1970s and 80s, and package it in a way that feels contemporary," Lambert told Berlin-based fashion and culture publication 032c.

The film is also a celebration of FKK culture, an abbreviation found in several European languages that stems from German and is short for "frei-körper-kultur" (free body culture), according to Urban Dictionary. It can be found on signs at beaches and lakes that tell visitors it's common to swim and sunbathe nude.

"Nudity is so normalized in German culture that people sometimes forget how progressive some of these expressions of body were and are," added Lambert. "You get used to the hedonism and sexuality in Berlin, with FKK being this normalized thing, but it is still quite radical in comparison with the rest of the world."

The Pornhub pieces first made their debut on De Saint Sernin's Spring 2022 runway for his “Le Désir” (desire, in English) collection, which the porn company sponsored and was followed by a Pornhub afterparty in Paris. It features T-shirts, singlets and hoodies, the idea being to say that "sexuality is part of everyone’s life," as the designer told Numéro.

See the X-rated film, below.

Film and photography: Matt Lambert