When classical craft techniques meet booming modern subcultures, some workers thrive. For Claude J. Vaillancourt, of P&C Creations, a livelihood has been built in the unlikeliest of places.
P&C CREATIONS
Claude J. Vaillancourt is in many ways every bit the typical American biker, and he looks the part. He sports a long, heavy grey beard and wears a Harley-Davidson hat over close-cut, salt-and-pepper hair. Like many bikers, Claude spends a lot of time in his garage. When I first met him, months ago, I was struck by the heady smell of motor oil and leather. It’s not a bad smell.
His garage is, for the most part, a typical man cave. The walls are covered in workbenches and tools hang from pegboards above them. Innumerable tackle boxes store small tools and, looking closely, one can surmise some of Claude’s interests, such as hunting. In the center of the garage is a kitchen island, currently serving as a miniature workbench. The cabinets below it store bolts of fabric. Its surface is, like the other workbenches, covered in tools: scissors, leather punches, and a couple of spools of weedwacker cord.
It’s hard to be heard over the noise. While Claude occupies the garage, the room is filled with sound, a constant staccato that makes most of our conversation shouted as I Skype in to his Michigan-based workshop.
The noise does not come from a motorcycle, as one might assume. Claude’s garage lacks a motorcycle. Claude owns motorcycles (Harley-Davidsons, of course), but they are stored elsewhere. Claude’s garage is his workshop and every inch of space here is precious. The noise is coming from a sewing machine, and that sewing machine is where Claude spends most of his time, sitting hunched over on a stool that seems too small for him.
“A few [people] asked me if I would do a kitty mask, eventually. I had my first go at it in November. But I think I can do better,” explains Claude. He is painfully shy and doesn’t look up at the screen for most of our interview, his gaze resolutely fixed on his hands and the mask that takes shape beneath them.
This proclamation, that he can do better, is Claude in a nutshell; he is a perfectionist. His niche market, leather animal masks, sell for hundreds, and he makes dozens of masks a month. “Pup hoods” are a hot commodity among the human-animal roleplay community. According to Claude, 75% of his business is now pup hoods, while the other 25% is more standard leather fare, such as belts and motorcycle saddlebags.
Leather culture occasionally gets media attention for its titillating, niche fetishism, but it’s typically the practitioners of the culture who enjoy the spotlight: men who wear chaps, women who bear whips, packs of men who don leather dog hoods. The dramatic appearance of those wearing raunchy, sleek leather outfits naturally draws the eye. Rarely does anyone ask where the chaps, whips, or hoods were purchased. The makers of the chaps, whips, and hoods hover in the wings, drawing little attention themselves from anyone beside their customer base. In the leather community, a micro-industry quietly thrives; leatherworkers like Claude make a living for themselves by supplying bespoke leather garments to buyers. Most leatherworkers have a specialty, and Claude’s is leather dog hoods.
Currently, Claude is experimenting with holographic materials. He unfurls a bolt of fabric like a magician, revealing a shiny metallic leather. “It’s slippery and hard to work with,” he reports ruefully, eyeing the fabric. Last month, his interest was with animal hide. “It gave the masks a furry look, which was great. But it was a lot thicker and harder to shape than the regular stuff,” he says.
His pieces draw their inspiration from both real dogs (he shows off an early model of a pink poodle and a newer model with the distinctive concave muzzle of a bull terrier) and from characters (his most recent pieces include a Pennywise dog mask from Stephen King’s It and another in the style of Marvel’s Deadpool).
Claude’s interest in making leather dog masks is only about six months old, but it is a passion. And, fortunately for Claude, a lucrative one. His usual work (gauntlets, wallets, motorcycle saddlebags) does not provoke him to stay up late at night in his garage trying to figure out how to attach whiskers. His usual work also does not net him a living wage; leather dog hoods have become the bread and butter of P&C Creations.
“This was a hobby that blew up in my face and I didn’t admit that I had the addiction until it was too late,” admits Claude as he re-rolls the bolt of leather he was showing me and places it carefully back onto its place on the shelf. When I ask him about his schedule, he laughs and tells me there is no schedule. “Shit, I work 90 hours a week, 26 days a month. It never ends,” he says as he settles back onto his stool. He is quick to add that it doesn’t feel like a burden, because he loves what he does.
PUPPY PLAY
The Eagle in Long Beach is easy to miss and I drive by it twice before I realize it’s the windowless, nondescript, faded black building next to the 7-Eleven and the Vietnamese deli. From the outside, it looks very small, not much bigger than an international shipping container that’s been converted into a bar. There’s no sign and the entrance is located in an alley, where a lone bouncer checks my ID before waving me in.
It’s Thursday and that means it’s Barking Billiards: a weekly event that caters to human pups. Upon entering, I immediately espy a dog house, fire hydrant, and other canine-related props scattered across the floor. Men in dog masks and various states of undress are standing in clusters, drinking and talking; all of their drinks have straws to allow them to sip without removing their hoods.
The Eagle is a gay bar. More specifically, a leather bar. The overwhelming majority of leather pups are gay men, and therefore, the overwhelming majority of events for human pups are held at gay leather bars, where some percent of the clientele are either already pups searching for a place or gathering.
Curiously, Claude is not gay himself, though he does consider himself a “leatherman,” a part of the subculture that fetishizes leather. Gay leather bars and biker bars have a lot of overlap in terms of clientele and uniforms, and although Claude is happily married to a woman (his wife, Pam, is the “P” in “P&C Creations”), he would no doubt fit in with the crowd at the The Eagle, which has many men with the uniform grey beard and Harley-Davidson accoutrements. In fact, the owner of The Eagle, Craig, could easily be mistaken for Claude’s brother; he has the same heavy build, the same pale eyes, the same stormy whiskers, and the same gentle manner. He mans the bar in the back, wearing a pair of tight leather pants and a t-shirt with a pawprint on it. I shoulder my way to him to order a drink and ask him about Barking Billiards.
Barking Billiards began last year, and used to be held on Tuesdays, he says as he sets a plastic cup on the bar for me. It got big enough that it was moved to a more popular night. The central draw of the night, says Craig, is that this is a place where pups are allowed to wear their hoods. Because hoods are a face covering, not all bars allow them, nor do all venues. It’s a matter of safety, and also a consideration for the non-hooded patrons of the bar. Here, the patrons seem perfectly comfortable with the pups, and they mingle with them easily. Men without hoods will occasionally toss a tennis ball across the floor of the bar or offer, in passing, a behind-the-ear scratch to a man in a dog mask, prompting a delighted full-body wiggle.
Inside the Eagle, my initial impression of a shipping container doesn’t change much. There are two rooms: an enclosed outdoor patio and an indoor bar. The indoor bar is exceedingly small, low-ceilinged, and dim. The outdoor patio is enclosed by walls, but the roof is gone, replaced with military-style camo netting. Both spaces have a strange, aggressively rectangular shape, and the narrow thoroughfares make intimacy unavoidable. There is a lot of accidental skin-on-skin contact; my arms brush through warm bodies as I try to navigate the crowd without spilling my $3 beer on anyone’s leather harness, searching for any pups who might want to talk to me about their hood.
Claude’s interest in making gear for puppy play bloomed at an opportunistic time. “Puppy play,” a type of roleplay fetishism rooted in BDSM, has recently exploded in popularity. Pup play involves roleplaying as a dog, which might include barking, being on all fours, or chewing on squeaky toys. Pup play is a subculture within a subculture; it began in leather BDSM but lacked any sort of structure until sometime in the 1990s, when small human dog shows began cropping up in the U.K. By the late 1990s, there was a smattering of human dog events at gay clubs across the world, especially in urban hubs such as London and San Francisco; local communities began organizing “PAH” (pronounced “paw”) groups, short for “puppy and handler.”
Before the 2000s, there was only one source for leather dog hoods: Mr. S. Mr. S is a ubiquitous brand name for fetish gear. Mr. S has brand recognition borne from a history drenched in leather; it was established in 1979 and is currently the biggest retailer of leather and fetish gear in San Francisco. For many customers, there’s a sense of pride when the hoods are purchased from the flagship store during Leather Pride week in September, when Mr. S sees a huge spike in its business.
Mr. S offers puppy hoods in neoprene (starting around $150) and leather (running well over $300). An entire section of the flagship store in San Francisco is now dedicated to pup play, with headpieces being the most coveted item. Typical puppy hoods feature a muzzle and ears; some have prosthetic lower jaws and tongues that jut out from the mandible and give the impression of talking. But a recent New York Times article describes how Mr. S “can’t keep up with demand.” This is good news for independent hood makers like Claude. With the birth of the online market place Etsy in 2005, the options available for buying customized leather pup hoods dramatically increased.
Glancing casually around The Eagle, I count six Mr. S hoods, all similar in design but with different colors: two blue, one white, one yellow, one red, one purple. Dr. Seuss’s dream. There are also a few that are decidedly not Mr. S; the Mr. S hoods have short ears. On a pitbull, you might call them “cropped.” In the back, a shirtless Rottweiler playing pool has a pair of significantly large, pointed, bat-like ears. His markings are not in the bold, stylized style of Mr. S but resemble more closely a biological dog’s markings.
Some of Claude's "breed-inspired" hoods.
There is only one pool table in the dim, low-ceilinged bar, but the “billiards” part of “Barking Billiards” is only an excuse for the night; the pups came here to mingle, not to play pool. Their characteristics are distinctly dog-like; when I ask questions they can’t hear over the music, their heads cock and they ask “Aroo?”
“What do the colors mean?” I ask the yellow Mr. S dog over the music.
“Aroo?” he replies, head cocking.
“What do the colors mean?” I call, louder. The pups have some difficulty hearing me through the hoods and their voices are slightly muffled because of the muzzle. A few tilt their noses up so that I can better hear them.
“Watersports!” he shouts.
I ask for elaboration. Watersports is slang for a urination fetish.
“Are all of the hood colors coded for--” I begin, but he cuts me off, shaking his head in a way that make his short little ears flap against his head.
“No, the colors don’t mean anything,” he says.
Pushing his hood up onto his head like a strange hat, the muzzle now pointing directly up in a howl, he explains that pups choose their colors for a variety of reasons. Some are signaling a fetish, but others simply choose their favorite color.
Later, I ask two pups who are there as a couple what the colors of their hoods signify. They have matching hoods with blue, red, and orange, the only difference between them is the position of the ears; the pup with the upright ears is the “Alpha” and the one with the downward ears is the “beta.” Their answer is simply, “We thought it looked cool.” Another pup sporting a black-and-white hood explains that the pattern of the hood is meant to represent the breed he identifies as: a husky.
No one mentions the steep price tag; to the men at this bar, the hood was worth every penny. When I ask how much they paid, a fairly universal answer is something like, “About $270, but I got it on sale,” or, “$300, but it was for Pride.” Any time money comes up, there is a “but” qualifier that justifies the purchase. Several have multiple hoods, which they swap out depending on the event, their mood or what they’re seeking that night.
It’s worth mentioning that, in the course of my research, I did find inexpensive pup hoods from Amazon. Made of artificial leather, they were $30. I asked Claude his opinion of these; he said they were low-quality knock-offs from China and that, while they might be functional stand-ins for people who are new to puppy play, they could never replace his bespoke leather masks. This sentiment was echoed by some of the human pups I spoke to at the Eagle, who said that imitation hoods are easily identifiable and of poor quality. No one seemed to consider the $30 hoods on Amazon to be worth even discussing, and I could find no one who had purchased one for himself. (I did find one pup who had purchased four, with the intention of giving them out to new pups who did not yet have hoods. But he said that they were only meant to be placeholders until those people could purchase “real” hoods.)
There is little competition between Claude and the cheap hoods on Amazon, because the Amazon hoods are emulating the Mr. S design, and Claude’s specialty is hoods with unique features. His shop currently has 83 different hood variants, roughly one “new” style for every two days he’d been making the hoods. It’s worth noting that some of these variants are stylistically the same but with only minor color alterations. A pup hood with two floppy ears is considered a variant of one that has only one floppy ear; ear placement, Claude says, is very important to people. Claude estimates that only ten to fifteen of his hoods are not pups; he has made a few cat hoods and a few bears, but dogs are the top sellers. (Currently, he says, he’s working on a bull, which he imagines will later lead to a horse and then a unicorn.)
I ask the pups at the Eagle what the general purpose of the hoods are. The responses vary, but are similar in nature. The hoods help these people get into the mindset of a dog, and signal to others that they are dogs and want to be treated as such. Why dogs? I ask four and get four different answers:
“Dogs are loyal.”
“Dogs get pampered.”
“Dogs are service-oriented.”
“Dogs are a man’s best friend.”
The dogginess of the men in pup hoods runs on a wide spectrum. Many bark at each other in greeting and then immediately begin speaking to one another in English, while others simply circle, sniff, and whine. Some lean on the bar and watch a game of pool being played, while others, on their hands and knees in a roped-off area, play with squeaky toys. Whenever a toy squeaks, heads turn. When the heads turn, upright ears flap a little, giving the hoods a very strange sense of animation, as if the ears were truly twitching.
One such pup with upright ears that I noticed earlier is a Doberman. I had initially mistaken him for a Rottweiler; he is quick to correct me once I approach him.
“Rottweiler, right?” I called.
“Doberman,” he says as he leans down and cracks a striped ball into the corner pocket. He is wearing a red beanie over his hood, which immediately endears him to me; the hat softens the sharp, stern look of the Doberman face.
He asks if I’d like to join him. I warn him that I’m terrible at pool, but he insists. He’s shirtless and offers to teach me. As he racks up the balls, he enthusiastically describes the chain collar and leash he made for himself in a machine shop, and graciously lets me try it on, in between leaning me over the table and showing me a better way to hold the cue stick. All of his gear is hand-made… except the hood, which was custom-ordered from England from a company called Wruff Stuff. “Neoprene breathes better. It’s easier to clean; you can just use dish soap,” he says. He thoroughly thrashes me in pool, but is encouraging and friendly the whole time. He is aware of Claude’s hoods and says he’d like to order a leather one, someday. I ask if he would ever try to make one for himself; he immediately says no.
There are no homemade hoods here, though there are several homemade collars, harnesses, leashes, and other accessories. I note that most of the pups here have neoprene hoods, not leather. The two main reasons I’m given, from a number of pups, are simple: neoprene is cheaper, and easier to clean. When I ask about leather, pups almost universally melt; they all clearly love leather hoods, but most found the price tag disqualifying. Nonetheless, they have strong opinions about leather hoods, and can list suppliers; all but two of the people I ask have heard of Claude’s work, and unprompted, two pups offer up the name of another Etsy leather shop: Wolf Stryker Leather.
I look up the shop later; the very first hood I see is $350.
Leather subculture is steeped in tradition and rules, called “Old Guard.” Old Guard leather was the original gay leather BDSM culture that gained popularity in the 1940s. Old Guard Leather emphasized strict roles and protocols. I could find no evidence of human pups in any texts that discussed Old Guard traditions, and when I asked around, many of the older men who had been in the leather scene a long time told me that pups simply didn’t exist. Pups that did would have fallen into the roles of “boys” or “slaves,” submissive roles. They would not have played with squeaky toys. There was no place in Old Guard for colorful, whimsical hoods; in Old Guard tradition, leather was meant to be gifted for service, and was handed down from master to slave. There was certainly no neoprene.
Every single pup I spoke to had purchased his own hood for himself. The booming pup hood business of the 2000s reflects clearly a shift in the leather subculture; gay leathermen are becoming increasingly lax about their self-imposed rules and roles. There is a small amount of hierarchical thinking that I suspect might have stemmed from Old Guard traditions; for example, a few pups speak about their “packs.” Much like leather families of the’70s and ‘80s, human pup packs have clearly defined roles, modeled after dog or wolf packs: there is an Alpha, who is a leader, and one or more betas, who are his submissives. In some packs there is a human handler, but not always.
Claude’s lifestyle seems usually tame compared to some of the pups I met at the Eagle. He lives in a normal house in Michigan with his wife and a pair of cats; on FaceBook, he shares a picture of his son along withside pictures of himself fishing. Nearly all of the pups at The Eagle are gay men in their 20’s and 30’s. Yet I do bump into a heterosexual pair, wearing matching WolfStryker Leather hoods. The man’s is black and blue; the woman’s is pink and white. When I tell her I haven’t met any other female pups, she sighs and says, “Yes, I know.”
While pup play has found a footing in gay leather culture, all seem welcome. At The Eagle, the heterosexual couple mingles easily with the packs of gay men, and at one point I see the woman in the fenced-off area, chasing a ball alongside some other pups. Dogs are dogs.
The roleplay involved in puppy play extends far beyond barking in a bar; for many, it’s a lifestyle, and even without wearing the hood, entire relationships are forged based on roles that fit into the framework of a canine-based relationship. The heterosexual couple says that even outside of their hoods, pup play has had a big impact on their relationship; they look at each other as “mates.” Furthermore, not all of the relationships based in pup play are sexual; many pups at the bar described their relationships to their handlers as a mentorship or brotherhood. And not all pups need to wear the hoods to maintain that relationship. Some are capable of channeling their inner canine without donning a mask. That being said, one pup told me, “It [the hood] helps me get into the headspace. I’m a better dog when I’m wearing it.”
A BOOMING BUSINESS
Claude admits that this isn’t his first rodeo. He was aware of the puppy culture back when it was in its infancy (or puppy stages, if you like) two or three decades ago. But back then, masks were not a lucrative business; they were simply not in demand. “I was involved in the puppy movement back in the nineties,” he says as he uses a pair of fabric shears to carve out an ear-like shape from a bolt of leather. “But it wasn’t called the puppy movement. It wasn’t [called] anything. It was really in its infancy back then. ...I left the industry in the 2002-era, that’s when the puppy movement really started to gather steam and a lot of the stuff really started coming to the surface and people started to gather with it. But I was out of it from 2002 through about 2010, 2011, and those years, it just blossomed, so when I came back, I saw this massive puppy movement that was incredible.”
As if to underline his annoyance at price-gouging, a metal snap button he was fixing to the cat hood suddenly ricochets across the workshop. Claude does not get up to retrieve it; he fishes a new piece from one of his tackle boxes. I imagine there are a lot of tiny, warped metal pieces that have rolled under his work bench over the years.
Claude is not someone who gets easily frustrated, I find; when the button flies off, there is no break in the rhythm of his work, and he carries on calmly. His hands remain steady as they piece together the mask, making tiny chalk marks to indicate where the next button, stitch, or overlap will be placed. Claude tone does not betray any resentment towards his competitors. While he refuses to “name names” regarding which hood makers are gouging prices, he is more than happy to name names when it comes to lavishing praise. He mentioned Nigel Hill, the designer for Wruff Stuff, as well as Zeke Crowley, another Etsy artist who makes leather dog hoods for a much higher price tag, whose work he describes as “gorgeous.” Claude says that he feels the community of makers should support each other where they can, by sharing information and techniques, and by recognizing each other’s work.
Claude was recently working on a dragon-themed hood (based on Game of Thrones) but decided to delay its release for a few months when Wruff Stuff came out with a similar design; Claude didn’t want to step on any paws. He describes it as “beautiful” and says he didn’t want to “steal Nigel’s thunder.” The two of them came to an agreement (or at least, Claude did) that Claude would delay his release until July or August to allow Nigel to claim intellectual credit for the dragon design, which was made available for purchase in March.
“It’s not always about the glory and the money,” he says pacifically as he measures a pair of ears for his cat mask. He wanted Nigel to get credit for the design even though the two masks were created independently and around the same time; Claude says it’s a matter of integrity and ethics. Besides, Claude has plenty of work; his turnover time, from request to completion, is only two or three weeks, and at any given time he has dozens of hoods in the making.
Clearly Claude has a lot of respect for Nigel; he refers to him on a first-name basis and seems to consider him a sort of kindred spirit. Nigel began Wruff Stuff in 2015 and quickly cornered the market on customized neoprene hoods. Perhaps some of the respect comes from the fact that the two are not in direct competition; Nigel is based in the U.K. and trades in printed neoprene, whereas Claude is based in the U.S. and trades in sewn leather.
Then again, Claude also speaks fondly of Zeke Crowley, a direct competitor who sells highly priced, bespoke leather hoods and, like Claude, has been selling them on Etsy since 2016. Zeke, says Claude, is someone whose work justifies the price tag.
Though Zeke’s work, by Claude’s estimation, is more intricate, Zeke makes pieces by commission only; Claude far surpasses Zeke in terms of volume. Though he is happy to make custom pieces, he also has dozens of masks immediately available for purchase, ones he made for fun and that he trusts will someday find a buyer.
While many human pups purchase their hoods online, many more buy them from festivals, conventions, or leather contests. At fetish, leather, and even Pride events, many leather vendors now sell puppy hoods alongside their more pedestrians whips, gags, and chaps.
Claude has been a part of that circuit and knows it well. “Leather season” is poorly defined, with events happening all year. Some of the biggest draws include Folsom Street Fair (in September) and international Mr. Leather, a title contest (similar to a pageant) in May. Claude used to attend major events and pay to set up a vendor booth, but doesn’t nowadays. He found the travel and set-up to be exhausting.
One of Claude's booths from years past.
I can imagine that Claude would find tending a vendor booth to be boring; every time I have spoken to him, his hands have been busy at work. He rarely looks up and while we speak, he sketches out designs on cardboard, cuts out pieces to model hoods, and digs into fabric with a leather punch that clearly puts a strain on his muscles. Claude’s hands are never idle, and I cannot imagine him sitting in a booth all day, away from his sewing machine.
He still attends some local events. This year’s International Mr. Leather contest is in Chicago, a short distance from Claude, but he’ll be attending as a guest, not as a salesman. The process involved in packing up dozens of products, displaying them, and then moving back the unsold inventory was exhausting and, worse, boring. Claude’s touring days are over; now, literally everything he sells is online, a process that leaves him with far more time to spend designing and crafting.
As we speak, he pivots on his stool and reaches for one of the rolls of weed whacker cord. I was wondering about the cord; he unspools a length of about a foot, snips it, and then repeats the process, using the first piece of cord as a measurement.
Curiosity gets the better of me. “So, where is the cord going?”
The whiskers on the cat mask he’s doing, I come to find out, are made from the weed whacker cord. Claude didn’t want to use wires because they would be too much of a poking hazard in the bar scene; he wanted something springy and light that would also be safe. Inspiration hit him while he was in a hardware store. The worst part of having his shop in his home, he says, is that when inspiration hits, he has to go and immediately try out his idea; this has led to several manic 5 am hood-making sessions.
When it comes to making his hoods and improving his designs, Claude has the tenacity of a terrier.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
P&C Creations is Claude’s second leather shop.
Born in the 1960s to a pair of French-Canadian migrant workers, Claude spent a childhood split between Toronto and Massachusetts. His parents were apple-pickers, and Claude grew up in the countryside, where he cultivated hobbies such as hunting. This, of course, would lend itself well to his later passion for leatherwork.
In the early 1990s, in Colorado, Claude opened his leather shop, called CJ’s Leather. As he mentioned before, the logo was a dog bone, a tip of the hat to pup culture, which, back then, Claude says, “wasn’t an accepted thing; it was nothing.” Back then, he says, humans pups “weren’t even called human pups; they had no names. They were just guys who liked to act like dogs.” Claude knew about them and was happy to be involved in what community there was, but as far as his business went, hood commissions were a rarity. Most of his wares were belts, harnesses, holsters, and other such leather accessories.
Then in 2002, following a motorcycle accident, Claude sold CJ’s Leather. He says he walked away; “it was a growth thing. We were doing decent… but I just needed a clean slate.” He says he “wasn’t a very nice person back then,” and that his business was “ego-generated.” After the motorcycle accident, he took stock of what was important and decided to sell his business.
He would return to the world of leatherwork in 2013; having sold all of his assets, he was starting from scratch. He had seen the success of other leather shops on Etsy and felt he could do better work (or at least charge less for the work he was doing). The role of social media had changed the face of the leather marketplace, making it more accessible to buyers; Claude felt it was time to get back into his hobby. He created a Kickstarter to buy the equipment for his new shop, including a sewing machine for leather (a far tougher material than fabric). P&C Creations (named for Claude and his wife, Pam) has now existed for about six years; like CJ’s Leather, most of its initial offerings were saddlebags, wallets, and armor for costumes, including a recreation of the outfit worn by Marvel’s Thor.
But once Claude began making the pup hoods, they quickly outstripped all other items in their popularity.
This would not have happened ten or twenty years ago, says Claude. In the 1990s, pup hoods were a single color: black. Rarely, they might have colored piping or seams, but colorful, themed, and customized masks were unheard of. Claude attributes the rise of customizable masks to Wruff Stuff, which offering printed neoprene, creating an inexpensive and easy way to produce colorful and patterned hoods. For Claude, the puppy Renaissance was also a personal Renaissance; his love of making hoods revolves largely around the challenge of designing and mastering new techniques.
Having examined a few different styles of hoods at The Eagle, I’ve come to appreciate the wide degree of variation in how the hoods are attached. Neoprene Wruff Stuff hoods, for example, have a plastic snap buckle, while a Mr. S leather hood features a rawhide lace in the back. Claude’s designs use metal snap buttons. Three straps fold over an O-ring that rests on the back of the head, one on each side and one that goes over the top of the head. All of Claude’s hoods had three snap buttons, which allows the wearer to adjust the hood.
At a bar in Riverside called The Menagerie, I meet a pup wearing a hood that is unmistakably one of Claude’s. It’s a “pet” themed night but there’s only one pup here in a hood. It’s Spider-man-themed, one of Claude’s best sellers. I ask to try it on and the pup it belongs to agrees readily. To my delight, he introduces himself as “Parker Peters,” a spoonerism of Spider-man’s alter ego, Peter Parker.
Claude had pointed out some of the features of his hoods to me in an earlier conversation, and this hood sports them. For example, there are snap buttons on the ears, allowing the user to put each ear into an up or down position.
I thank Parker the Spider-man pup for letting me try on his hood and later ask Claude if he’s ever run into any trouble with copyright law, for making hoods that so clearly resembled a dog-version of licensed characters. Claude walks a fairly fine line with some of his work and says he treats some intellectual properties with a wide berth, because he doesn’t want to get slapped with a cease-and-desist. On the other hand, Claude says that hoods with pop culture themes get a lot of attention and tend to sell well; what’s more, they’re fun to make. Many of Claude’s just-for-fun projects are “themed” hoods. His most recent creation is a trio of bear masks in blue, pink, and yellow. Having been born in the 1980s, I recognize them immediately: the Care Bears.
PUPPY LOVE
Claude’s passion for hoods is unmistakable, but Claude never quite specified why: whether he himself was a pup, or a handler, or something else entirely. Probing for an answer, I ask Claude if he himself has a mask, a personal project. Claude says yes. “All of my projects are personal.”
“I meant, to wear, yourself,” I clarify.
Claude immediately says yes, he does. This doesn’t surprise me. However, what does surprise me is when Claude admits he’s only ever worn it out in public once. He says he doesn’t feel comfortable with the attention he receives, and feels self-conscious wearing it in public. He says that he prefers to be behind the scenes, unnoticed. “I do have one for myself and what’s funny is, I don’t feel comfortable wearing the hood. I made one for myself because I liked it. I love the puppy hoods, I’ve worn them here and there, but they are - I’m extremely self-conscious wearing them. Oh my God. I just can’t do it.” For the first time in our conversation, he stops working, turns on his stool, and looks directly into my eyes. He seems genuinely mortified. “To go out in public wearing a puppy hood? I can’t. I tried it one, and I just - people looking at me, I couldn’t do it. ...if you ever see me out, I’m very very subdued in what I wear for leather. You know I have my leather pants, my leather shirt, very traditional but extremely subdued. It’s never black and navel, shiny, look-at-me, it’s usually black on black, very quiet, very subtle details. I don’t like attention. As a person I don’t like attention; as a business I love attention. But personally, oh my God. Don’t ever ask me on a stage.”
This tracks with other things I’ve picked up about Claude; even his business model seems “subdued” and gentle.
Suddenly, his interest in making the hoods makes sense to me. This is Claude’s way of participating in a culture he’s too shy to directly participate in. The puppies I met at The Eagle clumped together in boisterous packs; they were outgoing, enthusiastic… dog-like. Pup play favors extroverts. For Claude, making the masks and seeing their wearers enjoy them brings him vicarious joy.
I mention that some of the pups I talked to at The Eagle said they felt safer behind the hoods. The hoods, they said, created a sort of “barrier” with the real world, and they were able to be less inhibited with the hoods on.
To this, Claude replies, “No, no, no,” and shakes his head. He simply can’t do it, he says; he’s too shy to be a puppy himself.
I ask to see a picture of Claude’s personal hood, and he shared a photo from the one night he went out. He is wearing all black leather: pants, shirt, boots. A whips hangs from his right hip. The mask is a Doberman and, like all of Claude’s hoods, lacks a prosthetic jaw. For many pups this is a good thing, because hoods that have chin pieces don’t fit will with facial hair. Claude’s long grey biker beard spills out from under the hood.
“I try to be an instrument to create people’s visions,” says Claude as he tinkers with the cat hood. His brow furrows as he returns to his mask-making. The picture of himself in the hood has been put away and his attention is once more on the cat mask. Currently, he’s using a hook-like instrument to widen some holes in a leather strap where the pointy leather ears will go.
I ask him about expansion, a brick-and-mortar storefront where he can store and display his pieces for purchase; right now, several eyeless dog masks are staring down at us from a shelf. My favorite, by far, is the black-and-white Great Dane. Claude tells me his favorite to make was a poodle, because of the challenge of creating the curly fur. (He used macramé.) Claude has no permanent physical location to display or sell the masks; all of his masks are lovingly hand-crafted in his workshop, one by one, and most are sold online. His customers come to him from Etsy or simply from word of mouth. “One of the lessons I learned when I had my first shop was that once you develop a brick-and-mortar store, you are anchored,” he says. “And to unload that business, you’re much more constrained. When I developed this business, I developed it to be mobile. I can be anywhere in the world and do what I need to do and not worry about it.” Certainly, Claude rarely seems worried about anything; the only time I saw him exhibit worry was when I mentioned going out in public wearing a hood.
His hands don’t stop moving and he doesn’t look up from his blueprints. After he draws out his plans with pencil, he cuts the 3-D shape from stiff poster board and then models the leather around the paper shape. This cat hood doesn’t yet have an owner; Claude was asked about cat masks and he intends to create the perfect cat mask before he makes a listing on his Etsy page. There are already two half-finished cats lying on the work surface in the middle of the room. (They’re missing ears and whiskers; triangles of leather and lengths of weed whacker cord lie beside them expectantly, waiting to be attached.)
He charges between $165 and $230 for custom masks, which take three hours on average to make. A bargain for the human pup, many of whom want customizations to reflect their own personal relationship with their dog personas; a standard, plain-black leather Mr. S hood costs $320. Color customizations cost $350, and there is no option to alter the ear or muzzle shape. For Claude, customizations are standard. Even the pre-made hoods Claude has here in his shop can easily modified.
“Why not? I already have the machine,” he says, placing a hand on the top of his sewing machine. Most of the manufacturing involves measuring, cutting, shaping, and attaching. Details like a spot over the eye or a “bite” out of the ear are relatively simple to add, and give customers a sense of personalization.
Though many of the hoods are personal, one-of-a-kind commissions, Claude does churn out some “basic” hoods which can be ordered and sent out immediately. And though he doesn’t have a storefront himself, some of his pre-made pieces have been sent out to third party speciality stores to find a buyer. “Some places stock my pieces. New York, Toronto… and Men’s Room in Chicago has about… two dozen,” he says as he uses a pair of wire cutters to trim some whiskers. In the staff photo for Men’s Room Chicago, there are five people. No, wait, six. There are five people and one person at their feet, posed as a dog, wearing a familiar-looking leather dog mask. I sent Claude a message on Facebook later for confirmation.
“Is this one of yours?”
The almost sheepish reply I received was, “Yes, but that was one of my earlier ones. I’m doing better now.”
i know you posted this long ago, perhaps with no expectation that someone would read it. I did, and I can honestly say I was moved. I heard about Claude through my partner when i started looking for a hood, and immediately fell in love with his work. I still have yet to order from him, but it's a priority and your article has made me appreciate his work and passion so much more than i already did. Thank you
ReplyDelete