Grey ties are flying off the shelves as wives take inspiration from X-rated bondage novel to dress up their men
The erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey has made grey ties a fashion must for men hoping to emulate the sexy entrepreneur who wears them in the book.
It seems that after reading the BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) novel women in New York have been keen to get their men a silver grey tie – just like the one Christian Grey wears in the book.
The erotic novel, the first in a
trilogy, is currently topping the New York Times bestseller list for
e-books and is topping Amazon and Barnes & Noble charts.
Hot and steamy: The Fifty Shades trilogy has becomes a New York Times best-seller and is making Upper East Side wives rush to buy grey ties
A bondage-loving billionaire is gripping the attention of New York moms
A blogger who recommended the book before it became popular confirmed that the 'mommy porn' is setting sartorial trends too.
'Hundreds of women write to me every day asking where they can buy grey ties,' Lyss Stern of Divamoms.com told ABC news.
'The books are really making people
want to have sex again. They’re a Band-Aid for marriages that maybe
weren’t falling apart, but were getting stale.'
And the trilogy has now been snapped out by a paperback division of Random House Inc.
Vintage Books announced yesterday that it had acquired the three books, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. E-book editions will be out Monday and paperbacks are expected in early April.
It's been topping conversation topics on school runs, on well-heeled Caribbean holiday beaches and on the sidelines of Saturday morning sports practice, according to the New York Post.
Love letters: E L James, a TV executive from West London, is enjoying the cult success of her raunchy first novel
The raunchy novel has created a buzz among Upper East Side housewives who are devouring the book's
blue contents and fiendishly recommending it to friends.
Publicist
Alison Brod told the newspaper that the novel is 'the new Kabbalah for
female bonding in this city' – and is spreading its X-rated charms. 'I
found myself explaining what BDSM was to some of the moms at Saturday morning basketball.'
Having started posting BDSM fiction
online, author EL James piqued the interest of small Australian
publisher, The Writers' Coffee Shop, who took a leap of faith by
publishing Fifty Shades of Grey in May 2011, followed by Fifty Shades
Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, on sale since January.
The
newspaper likens the story to Twilight for grown-ups, suggesting it has
become something of a cult tome among mothers, who, according to New
Jersey mom, Alyssa Goldman, call it simply 'The Book'.
Mr Grey, a 27-year-old billionaire,
seduces young graduate, Anastasia Steele. He has a penchant for bondage
and soon envelops her in a world of kinky sex, S&M and XXX-rated
bedroom 'contract' games that make for solid post-watershed reading
only. Love, inevitably, is not omitted from the romance.
X-RATED: EXCERPT FROM FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
'Christian is standing over me grasping a plaited, leather riding
crop.
'He’s wearing old, faded, ripped Levis and that's all. He flicks
the crop slowly into his palm as he gazes down at me. He's smiling,
triumphant. I cannot move. I am BLEEP and BLEEP, BLEEP on a large
four-poster bed.
'Reaching forward, he trails the tip of the crop from my
forehead down the length of my nose, so I can smell leather, and over
my BLEEP, BLEEP lips. He pushes the BLEEP, BLEEP BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP
etc…'
Readers at Amazon froth over Mr
Grey's 'brooding', 'masterful', 'intimidating' character. Ms Steele is
clumsy, inexperienced but crucially, 'not naive'.
But it's not the brilliant literature than has people's tongues wagging – and cheeks flushing.
Pam, another Upper East Side mother, told the Post that Fifty Shades 'totally makes you horny … I think everyone has totally admitted to that.'
That 'everyone' includes Dawn, a 27-year-old who lives in New York's Financial District. She told the newspaper that the book is blush-inducing.
'Every time I pick up this book,' she explained, 'within five minutes of reading it, I’m already tingling below the belt.'
The Upper East Side local said: 'The
person who recommended it to me said, “It will make you want to have sex
with your husband.” And it did!'
The piece of erotic fiction is no
convenient handbag read – its 1,200 pages, an armful in itself, is laden
with steamy writing that makes it far from easy to read in public
places.
Fans, mostly women, are getting around
the issue by buying the Kindle edition, and 90 per cent of the trilogy's
100,000 sales are e-books.
Ms James – who says she is 'gobsmacked' and 'blown away by the popularity' – is currently working on another installment.