Herstory

Mission Statement

The Ms Los Angeles Leather organization is dedicated to both preserving the strong legacy of women’s leather herstory of the city of Los Angeles, and through a commitment to education, diversity, representation, inclusion and play; continues to build upon those contributions by providing platforms to all those in our community who walk the path of Leather embracing regardless of identity, ability, belief or form.

Our Herstory

In 1996 Lee Lambert and Joi Parker on the way back from International Ms Leather in Philadelphia devised a plan. They would upon their return bring women’s titleholding back to Los Angeles and from there, Ms Fallen Angel was born. In 1997 the first and only Ms Fallen Angel L.A. Leatherwoman, Lisa Weiszmiller was sashed.

After the contest, Joi Parker moved on and Lee was joined by their partner Lenny, Faye Foltz and Cara and together they re-launched the Ms. Los Angeles title with Marci Shrager winning the title of Ms. Los Angeles Leather 1998 followed by Faye Foltz 1999.

And then the title went dark…

17 years later, as part of her title year as Ms. Sanctuary Leather 2014, Shae Flanigan decided to bring the title back. With the blessing of the original founders, in 2016 three women stood on the stage at Threshold vying to become the next Ms. LA Leather. Ms Bullet 2016, Tuesday Niles, from the LA Girls of Leather; Persefonie Di Stefano and Ms Sanctuary Leather 2015, Goddess Moon.

And once the judge’s scores were tallied, Goddess Moon became the first Ms Los Angeles Leather in almost two decades.

The following year, Moon’s sash daughter, Ms Sanctuary Leather 2016; Scarlett Sin followed and not only became the next Ms LA Leather, but a few short months before her step down took over as the new Owner and Executive Producer of Ms. Los Angeles Leather.

In 2018, the contest was held June 7-9 with 3 contestants, Cypher, Joslyne Bond and Panda. It was a close race but at the end of the night the latter was sashed. It seemed like the new titleholder was off to a great year, but unfortunately it was not to be, as a month later, the conduct of the titleholder left her producers no choice but to revoke the title.
The producers chose to leave the title vacant for the remainder of the title and instead decided to establish Ms LA Leather under the newly formed FoundNation banner alongside Los Angeles Bootblack as a non-profit entity and continue the extremely hard work alongside the Los Angeles Leather Coalition to unite the Mr, Ms and the newly launched Los Angeles Bootblack titles.
After considerable deliberation, conversation and negotiation, a contract was inked and with the theme of XXPloration, the 20th year of Mr LA Leather, and the first year of joint titles and LA Bootblack took place on one night, one stage, unifying three people as one Leather family.

On March 29th, 2019 LA Leather went to church, with the Pico Union Community center – a converted Sinai temple – becoming home to one of the most successful LA Leather celebrations to date. With the highest and most diverse attendance, judging panel and contestants, at the end of the night, joining the new Mr LA Leather (Elliot), LA Bootblack (Duke) was a woman who had stood here once before, Persefonie.

On the heels of such an amazing and successful event, it came a few months later as shock then to the LA community that in a highly contentious and shortsighted vote, by the slimmest of margins, the LA Leather Coaliion voted to seperate the titles again.

The producers of Ms LAL decided to use this as an opportunity to truly reimagine what these titles would be about and push the envelope farther than it has ever been before. So on June 20th, 2020, come and see the culmination of this work and join us in finding out, alongside LA Bootblack and the BRAND NEW Mx LA Leather title, who will be the next Ms. Los Angeles Leather…