A harness is the one piece in this category where sizing is easy and where almost everything else can still go wrong. Every strap adjusts, so the letter on the label barely matters. What matters is how wide the straps are against your frame, where the hardware ends up sitting, and whether you're wearing it on bare skin or over fabric. Get those wrong and it either slides all night or digs in by hour three.
It's also the most versatile thing we make. The same chest harness goes over a t-shirt at a festival, on bare skin in the bedroom, or flat under a work shirt where nobody knows it's there.
The main types (with real photos)
Chest harness
The classic: straps that frame the chest and shoulders. Faux leather reads club and fetish, elastic reads rave. This is where most people start, because it goes with everything from jeans to nothing. See the faux leather chest harness.
Leg harness
Straps around the thigh, worn alone or connected to a belt. Works under shorts at a festival, where a flash of strap at the hem does more than a whole outfit. See the red leg harness.
Full-body harness
Chest to thighs in one connected piece. Maximum presence on bare skin, and more comfortable than it looks, because rope-style nylon spreads tension along its length instead of concentrating it under one strap. See the full-body harness.
Want it louder? The same choker-top silhouette comes as a strappy two-piece in bold red, hot pink, olive green, UV-bright neon green and classic black, each with an open-frame ouvert bottom.
Industrial and rave harness
Wider straps, heavier hardware, chest-to-thigh garters, built to be seen across a dark room. Wear it over a mesh top or bare skin at techno and goth events. See the industrial harness.
Harness bodysuit
Half harness, half bodysuit: wetlook panels connected by straps and rings. The look of a strap harness with the coverage of a one-piece. See the wetlook harness bodysuit.
Prefer straps over panels? The strappy harness bodysuit with a faux-leather thong flips the ratio: mostly straps and o-rings, with just a wet-look front.
Soft femboy harness
Harness structure, lingerie energy: sheer mesh, ruffles and garter straps in soft colours. Proof that a harness doesn't have to look tough to work. See the baby blue harness set.
Four things that actually go wrong
Size is rarely what fails on a harness. These four things are, and all of them can be sorted before you order.
The shoulder straps slide outward. Most strap geometry is drawn for a narrower shoulder line. On a broad frame the two chest straps drift toward the arms over the course of an evening, and the front of the harness goes slack. A design with a centre ring holding the straps together, or one with a choker or collar at the top, holds its position far better than two independent straps. If your shoulders are the widest part of you, buy the connected kind.
The hardware finds a bone. Rings and sliders are the only rigid parts of a harness, and wherever one sits is where you'll feel it in three hours. On a chest harness the usual offender is a slider landing on the collarbone. You can almost always move it: loosen one side, slide the hardware two or three centimetres along the strap, and retighten. Do this standing in front of a mirror before you go out, not in a club toilet at midnight.
Skin and fabric need different tightness. A harness set over bare skin sits where you put it, because skin grips. The same harness over a t-shirt slides, because the fabric moves underneath it. If you're wearing it over clothing, take every strap in a notch or two beyond what felt right bare. This is the usual reason a harness looks right in the mirror at home and sags by the second bar.
Strap width has to match your frame. Narrow elastic on a broad chest reads thin and gets lost. Wide faux-leather straps on a slight frame swallow the torso. As a rough rule, the broader you are, the wider the strap you can carry; the more slight you are, the more the effect comes from the number of straps rather than their width. This has nothing to do with fit and everything to do with whether the thing looks deliberate on you.
Harness sizing: what to measure
Harnesses are the most forgiving fit we sell. Every strap runs through a metal slider, so one size covers a wide range of bodies, and being between sizes is fine: the adjusters absorb the difference.
You still want two numbers before you order, and a soft tape held flat rather than pulled tight.
- Chest - around the fullest part, tape level under the arms, arms relaxed at your sides. This decides every chest and full-body harness.
- Waist - around the narrowest part of your torso, usually just above the navel. This decides anything that connects down to a belt or garter.
For leg harnesses, measure the thigh at its fullest point instead. Thigh is the measurement people most often guess at, because it doesn't track waist size the way you'd expect it to.
| Size | Chest | Waist |
|---|---|---|
| XS | 82-88 cm (32-34") | 66-70 cm (26-27") |
| S | 89-94 cm (35-37") | 71-76 cm (28-30") |
| M | 95-102 cm (38-40") | 77-82 cm (30-32") |
| L | 103-109 cm (41-43") | 83-89 cm (33-35") |
| XL | 110-117 cm (44-46") | 90-98 cm (36-38") |
| 2XL | 118-124 cm (47-49") | 99-104 cm (39-41") |
| 3XL | 125-130 cm (50-52") | 105-110 cm (42-44") |
| 4XL | 131-138 cm (52-54") | 111-118 cm (44-46") |
| 5XL | 139-146 cm (55-57") | 119-126 cm (47-50") |
Each product page lists its own range. Full measurements, including mask and jewelry sizing, are on our size guide.
Harness materials, and how they behave
Faux leather holds a line and photographs best. It has no stretch at all, so the adjusters are doing all the work, and it doesn't breathe. Sized correctly it's fine for an evening; over a twelve-hour night on a dance floor you'll know it's there.
Elastic webbing is the opposite. It gives, it breathes, and it forgives a long night. It reads rave rather than fetish, and it's the safest choice if you're going to be moving for hours.
Rope-style nylon spreads load over its whole length, which is why full-body designs in it stay comfortable when a two-strap faux-leather piece would not.
Sheer mesh and ruffles aren't structural. They drape rather than hold, so they sit softly and won't mark skin, at the cost of the hard line that makes a harness read as one.
How to wear one
Rave or festival: over a fitted tee or mesh top, straps visible. Add the leg harness under shorts.
Club night: chest harness on bare skin under an open shirt or jacket.
At home: anything from this page and nothing else.
Everyday secret: a low-profile chest harness sits flat enough to disappear under a regular shirt.
A harness rarely goes out alone. If you're building a full look rather than adding one piece, our five best-selling lingerie sets is the shortest way to see what our customers actually pair straps with.
Heading to Berlin? We wrote a separate guide on what to wear to Berghain, covering how the door reads an outfit and which harness works for a twelve-hour night.
Care
Wipe faux leather with a damp cloth and let it dry flat, away from radiators. Hand wash elastic and mesh in cold water. Don't machine wash anything with metal hardware, because the sliders will chew the straps and everything else in the drum.
Store harnesses flat or loosely coiled rather than hanging. Hanging one by a single strap for months stretches that strap and nothing else, and then the piece sits crooked.
The short version
Sizing is the easy part, because the adjusters cover a wide range and being between sizes doesn't matter. Buy the connected kind if you have broad shoulders, move the hardware off your collarbone before you go out, tighten everything a notch further when you're wearing it over clothes, and pick elastic over faux leather for anything longer than an evening.
Browse the full men's harness collection or the wider rave outfits range. Everything is made to order in Ukraine in 2-4 business days and ships free worldwide in discreet packaging.