I came across your interview in the Jan issue of Panty Play. And I have to say from the sample photos and what your comments were in the interview you seem to offer exactly what I have always been looking for. I do admit and you may agree that other companies seem to go in the right direction, but always fall short. I hope that you offer what I want.
My main interest is in pantyhose. Nothing exotic like fishnet, seamed or wild colors, just everyday, like at the bank, in the grocery store, at church on Sundays. Even support pantyhose in colors such as brown, beige, tan black, white, off white, and the really dark blue, those are my favorite. And the shoes, well, I really don't care for the really high heels, because everyday women don't wear those, they wear mild pumps and flats.
In your sample photos in the interview, the clothes the women were wearing were nice. I like to see dresses, skirts, nothing too short, maybe right above the knee but nothing higher. Because I find highly erotic and a turn on to look and see up women’s dress or a skirt.
Ever since I can remember I have always been aroused by being able to look up dresses or skirts that are not too short, because if it's too short, then it seems to me that it's too easy. I don't like clothes that are too revealing on women and because most of the women that I will ever encounter in my life or already have are not perfect models. Don't get me wrong, I love beautiful women, but remember you have to be realistic. And that's what I'm looking for. I mean, come on, most of the women out there are not size 6's, shave their pubic hair and have giant breasts.
As for what's underneath the clothes besides the pantyhose, I prefer just regular under-garments, just like the pantyhose I said earlier, nothing exotic or fancy, just normal.
I really like the backdrop of the photos and poses of the beautiful women in the sample photos. You don't have any high tech, fancy unrealistic surroundings, it doesn't look fake. It looks like you have a woman at your home and unexpectedly you ask her to lift up her skirt, spread her legs on the couch, let you peek up her dress underneath the kitchen table. And she reluctantly says no, but after quiet consideration she calmly agrees. I love that.
And the women are beautiful, you don't have them doing crazy degrading poses or their hair all made up or tons of make-up.
So as you can probably tell from what I've written, I love to look up women’s dresses and skirts, wearing pantyhose, white panties, slips, bras.
I will tell you now, that from what I read in your interview and the sample photos in the interview you seem to have a good thing going and offer exactly what I want. And if you do I am willing to be a very loyal and profitable customer. So please respond ASAP with sample photos and all information you have to offer. And I am interested in the Videos you mentioned in your interview.
P.S. Privacy requested if possible when mailed.
Thank you
COPYRIGHT© 1998 Spotlite Communications
by Bob Quintana
We were first introduced to Bill Turlock through one of our regular contributing PANTY PLAY photographers. Assured that this man was one of the foremost—if not the foremost—devotees of the panty and lingerie fetish, we felt compelled to contact the man we'd heard so much about, Bill Turlock.
Our photographer hadn't been exaggerating, it turned out. Discovering Turlock's web site (http://www.llapa.com) could be compared to finding a treasure trove chock full of panty pleasure and lingerie bliss. It was instantly obvious that we would be well-served by this man's contribution to the pages of PANTY PLAY.
Hooking up with Turlock turned out to be delightfully simple, and he was audibly excited by the prospect of being interviewed by PANTY PLAY. Before the actual transcription of the interview we conducted with Turlock, take a look at a description of his company, LLAPA...in his own words:
We're a small "boutique" kind of panty-fetish company, and we take great pride in our treatment of the genre—no one in this "semi-pro" end of the business (or anywhere else for that matter) pays the kind of attention to the details in the ways that really work for the true aficionado. Our camera technique mimics a three-camera live shoot, with interesting camera angles, close-ups, changes of perspective and attention to the details of the panties and their erotic possibilities that make a potentially boring two-hour video incredibly stimulating. We don't just set the camera on a tripod and zoom in and out!
We've been advertising our products in Leg Show Magazine continuously since 1983 (that's right—eighty-three!), but we figured we might benefit from the new exposure a web page would provide (we're one of the best-kept secrets in the panty lover world)
We have customers who have been with us for more that ten years, some of whom have all our videos, and one even has a standing order—if it's new and it's by LLAPA, he wants it! Hardly a week goes by without some old customer writing in saying he went away to try the others, and wishes he hadn't.
Here's what Turlock had to say:
PANTY PLAY: When did you first discover your own personal interest in panties and lingerie?
BILL TURLOCK: Oh boy...longer ago than I can remember! (laughs)
PP: Do you remember one specific incident, or have you always known you were interested in panties?
BT: This is an interesting line of questioning...it almost sounds like a therapist's questions. Do you have any experience in therapy.
PP: To be honest, no, I don't. (both laugh)
BT: (pauses) Well, I'll go there if you want to, but it's long, involved and personal.
PP: You don't have to say anything you don't want to. I just thought it would be interesting to know how you personally discovered your interest in...
BT: No, you're right, though—you don't have to explain. Your focus is exactly right.
It was many years ago. I won't tell you exactly how many decades ago I got into all of this, but I think it came about in full-flower almost all by itself. My early sexual interests were developed around women's underwear. I have no clue as to why that is, but I spent a lot of my formative years in the late 50's. I was a War Baby—not a Baby Boomer. I grew up in an area of slightly more repressed sexuality than the rest of the country. It was the era of crinolines and the Can-Can and the poodle skirts, that sort of thing.
PP: How did you segue that upbringing into a hobby of photographing women in their panties? Was it that you were looking for that type of material and couldn't find it, so you decided to make it for yourself, or...
BT: It was like a natural progression for me. As a younger man, I'd taken some photography courses in college. And what really started it all was when I got fired from the last "real" job I had.
I was selling electronic kits over the counter. I just wasn't interested in it. The boss had ideas of climbing the corporate ladder, but he couldn't do so unless someone took his place. And it became increasingly obvious to both of us that it wasn't going to be me. So one day, he called me in and said, "Don't come in tomorrow. You can even go home now, if you'd like." And that was then end of that job.
PP: So, had you already started the nude photography?
BT: No, I hadn't. A long time before that, I'd taken some nude photos of my ex-wife, and I'd taken some Polaroids of my ex-girlfriend. But these had been mostly for my own amusement.
This was an interesting development for me. This was the Spring of 1982, and as it turned out, losing that job was the best thing that ever happened to me. I began to collect unemployment, and during that time I saw an advertisement for a radio announcer. It turns out that was also something I'd been interested in. To make a long story short, they ended up hiring me. And I started working the morning sign-on shift, which meant you had to be there at 4:30 AM to turn on the radio station, so to speak.
Well, sleeping in was my second favorite thing to do in the world. But it was also the first time I'd ever experienced what it was like to enjoy waking up in the morning and look forward to doing my job. It was a brand-new concept for me to be getting paid for having fun.
At that point, I started asking myself some rock-bottom, total honesty kind of questions. I said to myself, "Bill, if you had your choice, what would you like to do to make a living?" My first response was, "Well, I'd like to get paid for having sex. I'd like to be a gigolo." Well, there wasn't much demand for that at the time. My second answer would've been, "Well, I'd like to get paid for jerking off." There wasn't much demand for that, either. (laughs)
Finally, I said, "How about getting paid to watch girls? Maybe taking pictures of them!" My interest in lingerie had been concurrent with this whole period. I'd look at magazines and say to myself, "I want to see more pictures of ordinary types of girls in their underwear. I don’t want to see big-titted bimbos in Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie." And there weren't any.
I started doing this with a shoestring budget. I had, literally, fifty bucks in my pocket and a camera. I called Cavalier magazine, and spoke with their advertising person. I asked how much advertising space cost and was told it was $50.00 per inch. I sent in some copy and secured my first ad.
My first ad appeared in the September 1982 issue—coincidentally, exactly 15 years ago. And the ad used the same headline I still use today: "Lingerie Lovers/Panty Art." It went on to say: "Tired of the same old boring nudes? We have what you want...bras, panties, slips, petticoats, up-skirt, raised skirt." Stuff like that. And to be honest, at the time the ad hit the press, I didn't have a damn thing to sell. I didn't have a clue as to what I'd do next.
PP: And what was the response to the ad like?
BT: Well, the offers didn't exactly come pouring in, but inquiries started building. In that first year—from September through December—I think I grossed about $1200.00. Which is, when you think about it, kind of amazing. I charged $5.00 for a brochure and sample photograph—which is what I'm still charging to this day, fifteen years later, except that now I apply the $5.00 towards a credit with a first purchase. From there, the inquiries continued, and at that point I thought, "Well, now I really have got to have something to sell."
So I put an ad in one of the local shopper's newspapers. It said, "Models wanted for lingerie and pin-ups wanted. No experience necessary. All types from slender to buxom." And the damn phone rang off the wall.
PP: So you just began scheduling photo shoots from there on?
BT: Yes.
PP: And how many photos have you amassed so far, fifteen years later? Are they arranged in sets?
BT: I've shot approximately 15,000 photographs. They are arranged in sets. I sell them in sets of 10. The price is $18.00 per set. The first grouping is by item of underwear interest. In other words, if you want bras or panties or slips or girdles or hose, that's the first criteria...and it goes on from there. You can basically request any kind of underwear you'd like to see, from up-the-skirt shots to crotchless panties, and so on. I've really whittled it down so that it's very focused and ultimately satisfying for every individual customer.
On the opening page of my web site, it basically says, "Go away if you expect something for everyone here." There are so many other web sites out there that promise that. But the truth is that if you're a lingerie fancier of any stripe, the chances are that I do have something that'll satisfy you. I went to great lengths to avoid the approach that the other 20,000 web sites took.
PP: I noticed that. The home page is very direct, very honest. "If you're looking for lurid, sensational porn, go elsewhere."
BT: Exactly. In order to compete with that kind of market, you have to out-lurid them at their own game, and you can't. Besides that, that's not what I'm selling.
PP: Out of curiosity, how do you archive your product? How does one arrange and organize 15,000 photographs that are split up into so many different categories?
BT: It's awkward, to say the least. My catalog listing is only representative of maybe 15% of what I actually have available. And to be honest, it's my videos that account for the largest percentage of my gross income. Probably at least 65% of the gross.
PP: How long have you been producing videos?
BT: I started doing videos in the winter of 1984. I wasn't exactly one of the first, but I do think I was one of the early pioneers of what I prefer to call the pro/am genre.
PP: Were your current customers asking you to do videos?
BT: Yes. But when I first began, I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. Like everything else in this business, I just kind of gulped real hard and threw a little bit of money at it. For instance, the first couple of rolls of film I shot, I was using an on-camera flash. Harsh shadows and those kinds of things were the result. So I swallowed hard and bought the top-of-the-line consumer flash equipment, the best I could afford.
I didn't have any idea of what I was going to do once I picked up the video camera, nor how I was going to make it interesting. How was I going to produce a tape with enough length to make the customer feel he's getting his money's worth, and keep it interesting at the same time.
It turns out that I have an eye for this that I think maybe nobody else in the world has. I am—and there are going to be parts of this interview that sound pretty arrogant, and I think I've only recently come to this realization—probably the best at what I do in the world. I don't think there's anybody around that's doing what I do the way I do it, and with the eye for quality and the true fetishist's attention to details.
My stuff looks best and works best for the true, dyed-in-the-wool fetishist because there's a lot about it that the ordinary guy can't see. It treats the subject in such detail, respects and accentuates the subtleties of it that only the "true believer" can understand.
PP: How do you go about finding models for the videos? Do you place ads?
BT: By the time I started doing videos, I had a good—for lack of a better word—stable of girls who'd worked for me, and most of them were willing to do videos, as well. So that wasn't a problem.
PP: How are the videos set up? You make a point of mentioning in your web site that the focus in these videos isn’t plots or cum shots.
BT: To be honest, I don't know how I set them up. I start out with the idea that I'm going to make a video. And what you have to realize is that what's going on in the videos—and this is paramount here—is that we're selling underwear. Not literally selling underwear, of course, but selling images of underwear for men who are looking for just that. And at some basic level, the body that they're on does not matter. It's best if they're on a body, of course, but in some cases, the underwear themselves can just be laying on a couch, and they'll still be erotic to the true aficionado.
So basically, the body that you hang them on has to be attractive, but beyond that, it doesn't matter. So we are selling the images of the garments. For that reason, I start a video by thinking about what kind of undergarments I want to showcase. I go rummaging through my lingerie collection, which I'm sure is one of the largest in the world. I'm sure there are people out there who have larger collections than mine. Actually, that reminds me of one of my customers. He's been with me for over 10 years. He's in San Diego, and I think he's just as much of a panty fiend, fanatic, freak...whatever you want to call it, as I am. His collection, in volume, probably goes way beyond mine.
PP: What kind of volume are we speaking about here?
BT: I've never actually seen his entire collection. I've only seen parts of it. His wife is only vaguely aware of his fetish, and she only barely tolerates it, so it's kept in steamer trunks in his garage. And he's got dozens of these huge steamer trunks full of panties. I've probably got about 300-500 pairs of panties myself.
PP: And how has your personal collection been amassed over the years? Did you buy them, or did women leave them behind for you to keep?
BT: I can't answer that question directly. Let's just say that I get my panties in a variety of ways. But getting back to your question about how I produce my videos, I start with the underwear. I go pawing through my collection and start looking for something that I find interesting. And then I'll start thinking about some outerwear to go along with it. And I'll tell you, I'm good at this. I mean, I can put together an ensemble of clothes for a woman that just goes together. I just have a good sense of that.
So I'll throw the costume together, thinking all the time of the woman who's going to wear it. And then, I'll go into the shooting with a simple premise. To call it a plot would give it more importance than it really has. I go with the flow of whatever catches my eye—and that's what makes it work. Because one of the most important things is that underwear is all about fabric. About the sensuality of the fabric, the tactile virtues of the fabric. Of course, you can't feel the fabric in a video, but you can appreciate it if you see the fabric move and flow and the way the light plays on it.
The generalization is that people want to see clothing that is tight on a woman—tight skirts, tight jeans, tight slacks, tight panties. But the fact of the matter is that such tightness is actually counterproductive if you're into the true sensuality of it. Because if you have things that are loose and flowing and allow, for instance, wrinkles to appear, you can get a better visual sense of the flow and feel around the fabric. So, in essence, I follow the wrinkles. (laughs) But it just seems to unfold in the videos, and it just seems kind of natural.
PP: In closing, what are your personal favorite types of panties?
BT: Briefs and petticoats.
PP: Any favorite colors?
BT: White. Lacy, and white.
For more information, or to receive a catalog of Bill Turlok's panty-related materials, contact: LLAPA, Box 8005, Emeryville, CA 94662. If you've got an Internet connection, log onto Turlok's site at http://www.llapa.com. If you're a tried and true panty man with a passion for women's underthings, you can't go wrong with Bill Turlok's offerings. He is, above anyone else we know, the foremost fetishist on the subject of women's panties.
COPYRIGHT© 1998 Spotlite Communications