Getting Down with the Puffy Jacket Porn Scene

Here's a picture of Rihanna performing onstage in a Marios Schwab peplum puffy dress. "She wore this down dress at a concert the whole time," he messages. Another picture comes through of Rihanna, resplendent in burnt orange. "That's a North Face vintage jacket," he intones knowledgeably.

Ryan isn't a Rihanna mega-fan or just really into streetwear. He's the 36-year-old founder of Down Girlz—your online portal to the best the Internet has to offer of puffy jacket porn.

Puffy jacket aficionados (who self-identify as puffys) are a category of fetish fans devoted to one material: down. While still a niche genre of fetish porn, it's grown rapidly in recent years thanks in part to platforms such as Reddit, which enable puffys around the world to swap pictures of hot girls in "sexy pink Moncler jackets" (the luxury French brand is a favorite in puffy circles). While straight-edge puffys will be content with a suggestion of flesh under a down coat, more hardcore devotees will seek the pillowy pleasures of specialist porn sites like Down Girlz.

So who's drawn to the cushiony embrace of puffy jacket porn? "I'd say there's about 1000 people in the community," Ryan tells me over email. "It's mostly European men." For true puffy lovers, the requirements are exacting: "It has to be 100 percent nylon. This is as much a nylon fetish as it is a jacket fetish." After shoots, Ryan even sells his used jackets at a premium to hardcore fans. "I never wash them but I try to keep them clean," he explains.

Browsing Down Girlz, you'll find videos of women getting fucked in the sort of full-body ski suit your Grandma wears at Aspen. In one, a woman identified as Sybil "plays with her down prisoner," who's trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey under several puffy layers, including a sleeping bag, rolling helplessly on a nylon-sheeted bed. In another, Sybil gets spanked while wearing a massive North Face jacket. Bound, hog-tied, literally encaged—you can have anything you want, as long as it's in down.

Thirty-one-year-old performer Kajira Bound can't remember exactly how she got into down porn, but she wouldn't change it for all the breathable fabrics in the world. "I love bondage, and when I realized that I could be bound and tied up while wearing puffy jackets, I thought it might make for an amazing sensation," she says. "I think I enjoy it more because the jackets feel really nice on bare skin."

Bound explains that there are three common scenarios in her down jacket porn oeuvre. One, being bound while wearing a down jacket, mask, and pants; two, wearing multiple layers of down-filled clothes; and three; being abducted while wearing ski clothes then forced to cum with a Hitachi magic wand. "Good fun," she says of the last, telling me she never fakes an orgasm in a scene.

That said, being a puffy jacket porn performer isn't an easy gig. Shoots—which can last up to three hours—are physically exhausting. "It's technically challenging to struggle against complicated bondage ties while wearing a puffy coat," Bound notes. "Plus, you have to struggle extra hard so the struggle can be seen because of the puffy coat, and then you have to cum while struggling extra hard against bondage ties in multiple large puffy jackets."

For 26-year-old performer Kittie Nightbreed, from Michigan, it's important to remain relaxed—even when being encased in suffocating fabric. Her advice? "Stay hydrated and stay calm. The more you work yourself up the hotter you'll get, and you don't want to freak out."

If regular porn is a light jog in temperate weather, puffy jacket porn performers are running an ultra marathon in blistering heat: they are the elite endurance athletes of the adult world. "You get tired from struggling and cumming and need to keep struggling and cumming so the shoot is successful. So bodily preparedness and stamina is key," says Bound. "It's challenging."

It's tempting to label the puffy genre a natural offshoot of the global sportswear trend. But none of the people I interview seem particularly influenced by the Yeezy/Vetements aesthetic. Many trace their fetish back to a formative event in their childhood or a former girlfriend partial to a bit of down.

"I think it starts in childhood for us," says Ryan. "We saw a beautiful woman in a down jacket and got hooked. Or we have, or we touch, a jacket and become obsessed with them."

Fittingly for this most soft genre of porn, all the men I interview are scrupulously polite, timid almost. I put out a call on the Reddit puffy thread, asking people to share their experiences. Every response I get is both courteous and articulate—something Nightbreed confirms. "For the most part, fans always conduct themselves in a polite manner and are from all walks of life," she says. "When they do contact me, it's usually questions about brands of jackets, or to ask me how it feels."

One Redditor, a 35-year-old from Manchester, England, tells me he used to have a red puffy body warmer when he was younger. "I liked the feel of the material against my body," Mark* explains. "When I was around 11 a girl I knew asked me if she could wear it, and I thought, Wow, that looks so amazing." Another 20-year-old Redditor, Ahmed*, traces his fascination with the outerwear back to adolescence. "I think it has to do with me just liking the soft fabric and experimenting with it when I was in puberty—masturbating with a jacket. I noticed how it felt better than just my hand."

To puffys, ski resorts can be as erotic as swingers' retreats. "Living in Michigan, I saw plenty of great jackets," Ryan explains. "Imagine if women walked around in sexy underwear on the street. That's what puffy jackets look like to us." Ahmed knows first-hand the everyday temptations that accompany life in cold climes. "Most of the time, the most attractive girls where I lived wear these types of winter jackets, too. This probably fueled the fetish."

"Oftentimes fetishes are a result of a sexual imprinting that occurs in early childhood," says sex counselor and fetish expert Dr. Ian Kerner. He tells me of a patient with the fetish who had memories of his mother lovingly zipping him up in a down jacket. "He felt warm and secure and loved. From an early age, down jackets were a source of safety and security, and later became sexual objects of desire." Now this particular patient loves to have sex on top of a down sleeping bag and masturbate against the material, Kerner informs me.

Another man (puffys are mostly, though not exclusively, male) loves it when his girlfriend wears a down jacket during sex. "He says it's the idea of her being so bundled up, and then feeling her hot naked body underneath," Kerner recalls. I ask whether Kerner has come across any female fans of the genre, and he tells me he's worked with women who prefer to wear down jackets because they "feel safe and secure and protected in them."

Others love puffy jackets because of the psychological payoff, rather than the physical sensation of having sex on a bed of down. "Some men tell me they associate it with a preppy, college, L.L.Bean girl," says Kerner. "The coat is a sort of costume that reinforces a sexual fantasy: the good innocent girl getting naughty. Oftentimes the preference is associated with particular colors, such as white, red, or pink." Trawling the Reddit puffy thread, I find ample evidence to support Kerner's theory: Alongside the "Moncler sluts" you'll find more innocent posts showing smiling blondes in pink gilets.

While the predilection for down coats is an essentially harmless (if costly) sexual fetish, it's not always easy being a puffy. "I do feel ashamed of this fetish," confirms Ahmed. "Mostly because it's rare."

"I would rather not have the fetish, as it can get in the way sometimes," says Mark. He tells me he's only ever shared his desire for down with a few girls. "One was really glad I told her and was open to having fun with it," he says, "but the other was just a no-go and said it was weird and wouldn't have anything to do with it." Poignantly, he adds, "To be honest, that's what I thought the response would be when I brought it up."

Fetish aside, I've one burning question I put to all my puffy interviewees: what's the ultimate down-filled jacket? Mark's a fan of the old-style Naf Naf puffy jackets from the 1990s. Moncler and mountaineering brand North Face recur often. "For me, the North Face Nuptse is an all-time classic," muses Ryan. "Unfortunately, I can't afford every jacket the fans want. Monclers can cost over $2000."

After I've asked Ryan all the questions I need, he asks permission to ask one himself, and I agree. He wants to know whether I, too, possess a down jacket. I tell him about my trusty Penfield Hoosac.

"Penfield is a great brand," he replies.

* Name has been changed