Two blacklights weren’t enough for Daniel. Out of that frustration, and a private party invitation, Kinky Escapes was born, an event series where every location gets its own concept and equal pay is a given. Chrissi and Daniel talk about how vaulted cellars, gardens, and a Christmas carol turned into completely different nights.
Hey Daniel, tell us a bit about yourselves and your concept.
We’re Chrissi and Daniel, recently married, and together we run Kinky Escapes.
What probably describes us well as a couple is that we complement each other in a lot of ways. Daniel is the creative one and drives a lot of things forward. New ideas are constantly running through his head, and he always needs some project to work on. Chrissi is more the calm, structured side and handles things like planning, bookkeeping, and the whole back office.
That combination works pretty well for us. And it’s probably part of what makes Kinky Escapes what it is.
At the same time, a lot connects us. Communication and shared values matter a lot to us. We talk about pretty much everything: our relationship, our desires, and of course what we want from events and the BDSM scene.
That’s exactly where Kinky Escapes came from. We wanted to create events we’d actually want to go to ourselves. For us it was never just about BDSM, it’s about the whole experience: atmosphere, technical setup, decoration, entertainment, food, and above all how the evening feels for the guests.
How long have you been doing this?
Kinky Escapes has been around since 2023. In the beginning it wasn’t planned as an event series or a long-term project at all.
The idea for our own event became concrete when we were invited to a small party at a private venue. We saw the space and immediately recognized the potential. That venue doesn’t exist anymore, unfortunately, but it’s where we held our first event, “Highest Floor meets Darkest Dungeon.”
Honestly, we were mostly nervous at the time. We didn’t feel like we were founding the next big event company. We just kept asking ourselves: will everything work out, will people show up, will they enjoy it, will the whole thing run smoothly?
In the end it was a great event, and we realized our idea actually worked. So we repeated the concept a few more times. That’s how Kinky Escapes grew, step by step.
A single party eventually turned into the idea of developing different concepts. Today that’s a big part of what draws us to it: we get to keep trying something new.
How did it go from a personal preference to a whole event series?
At first we went to different events together, partly to figure ourselves out and see what we liked and what wasn’t really our thing. Naturally we also talked about what our own perfect BDSM party would look like.
Daniel’s background as an event technician meant he looked at things differently. At one neon party, for example, there were basically just two blacklights set up, and at some point he thought: that could be done a lot better.
That was pretty typical for him. Instead of just saying he didn’t like something, he immediately starts thinking about how to do it differently.
What sets a Kinky Escapes party apart from other parties in the scene?
I think a big difference is how much heart we put into each event. We really try to give our guests as much as possible and create an evening that doesn’t feel like just another party.
Daniel gets to really let his creativity run at these events. He builds his own decoration pieces, for instance, and we keep expanding our furniture and equipment. A lot of it is actually made by us and built or adapted specifically for a given event.
At the same time it matters a lot to us that we’re approachable as organizers. We don’t want to just stand somewhere in the background, we want to know how the evening is going and what our guests are experiencing.
Another point that matters a lot to us is equal pay. Everyone pays the same entry price per head. We want to make it clear that at our events, every person is worth the same. Especially in a scene where women sometimes pay very little at some events and men pay considerably more, it mattered to us to take a different approach.
We don’t want there to be even the impression that a higher entry fee buys someone special treatment.
At our events, everyone should be able to just be there because they’re interested in BDSM, curious, or want to get to know the scene.
And of course our guests themselves are a big part of what makes Kinky Escapes what it is. We have a very diverse crowd, and we’re especially glad that a lot of people from the queer scene come to our events.
Maybe there isn’t one single thing that defines us. It’s more the combination of how we design the events, how we treat our guests, and the fact that we genuinely live every event ourselves.
The nice thing is that no two nights ever run exactly the same. We have our concepts and recurring segments or show acts that have been with us multiple times. Still, something new, exciting, or just funny happens at every event.
A lot of our guests stick with us across many parties, and it’s always great to see which direction of BDSM they explore and develop over time. Often our event is the first event someone ever goes to.
You have several formats: BDSM Takeover, Silent Night, Highest Floor meets Darkest Dungeon. How does a new concept come about for you?
The ideas for new concepts almost always start with Daniel. He gets inspired by all kinds of things, whatever he sees, reads, or hears in everyday life, and at some point there’s an idea that we develop further together.
We always look at what a given location has to offer and try to build an experience directly out of that. We don’t want to repeat the same concept in different locations, we want to use what’s unique about a place or a particular theme.
A good example is “Highest Floor meets Darkest Dungeon.” The venue was a three-story house with an old vaulted cellar. The ground floor was the more neutral area where people also ate, and the upper floor had the play rooms. That gave Daniel the idea of playing with the different levels: as a sub, you had to, in a sense, earn your way up to the upper floor. What that looked like exactly was worked out individually between the people involved.
With “Silent Night,” on the other hand, the starting point wasn’t the location but the season and one specific idea. The concept came together around Christmas, built around the carol “Silent Night.” Daniel had the idea almost immediately: an event where the submissive partner is required to wear a gag, so communication works completely differently than usual.
Out of “Silent Night,” or rather out of the idea of deliberately limiting or heightening individual senses, came “Blindfolded Night.” There, we take away the sight of some of the guests and orient the evening more toward the other senses. There are, for example, different rooms where scents, tastes, and other sensory impressions can be discovered through touch.
When we later started holding events in clubs too, we again looked first at what the venue offered. That’s how “BDSM Takeover” came about. The idea was to take over an entire club for one night and turn it into a pure BDSM event.
Our newest concept, “Lost Paradise,” came out of a very special venue. It had a huge, beautiful garden that we absolutely wanted to use. That led to the idea of offering BDSM as an open-air experience, but within a protected setting rather than out in public somewhere.
We actually scrap our ideas pretty rarely. When Daniel has an idea and we’re both convinced by it, we usually try to make it happen. So far there hasn’t been a concept where, partway through developing it, we said, let’s not do this after all.
There was one format we didn’t repeat after the first event though: the “Kinky GetsBi Party.” That was a 1920s-style event with a particular focus on bisexual people.
We still find the idea exciting, but interest in that event was noticeably lower than for our other concepts. So we haven’t held it again since.
Interestingly, people still bring it up with us from time to time. So there clearly are people who find the idea appealing, it just wasn’t enough at the first event to turn it into a regular series.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we consider the concept a failure. Maybe the right opportunity or the right setting will come along again at some point.
How do you handle safety and consent on a night like this?
Safety and consent aren’t an add-on for us, they’re simply part of the foundation of any event.
Especially for someone attending for the first time, we want to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. Anyone who wants to can get a tour of the club from us and take their time getting oriented. And of course we’re always available for questions, especially for people who are completely new to the BDSM scene.
At our events there are also team members you can recognize by their glow bracelets, people you can approach anytime. These are people we’ve known for a long time, who we trust, and who know the scene well.
Our own stance on this was actually shaped by things we experienced ourselves as guests at other events. We saw people get touched without being asked. Coming from the swinger scene, we were familiar with the attitude of “no means no.” For us, consent goes a step further: only yes means yes.
For us that means you can’t just assume something is okay because the other person hasn’t explicitly said no. You ask first, you get consent, and only once it’s actually there does anything continue.
We want to pass that attitude on at our own events too. There’s no “you have to” with us. Everyone decides for themselves what they want to try, with whom, and how far they want to go.
We also try to take on a lot of responsibility beforehand. We look at our guests’ profiles and put the guest list together deliberately. As a result, we’ve fortunately never had a situation where we had to remove someone from an event while it was happening.
There is one challenge that comes up regularly at the door though: people showing up spontaneously and unannounced. We can’t run the same check on them that we do with registered guests, so as a rule we don’t let them in. That’s sometimes an uncomfortable decision to make, but we have to be consistent about it to protect the safety and trust of the guests already there.
We want to create a setting where people feel safe enough to explore their own limits on their own terms, while also knowing someone’s there if they need support.
Who comes to your events, what does your audience look like?
Our audience is genuinely pretty diverse, and that’s exactly what we like about it.
We have a lot of couples at our events, but just as many people who come alone. Very different kinds of people end up in the same room: some have lived BDSM for a long time, others are curious and just taking their first steps into the scene.
We especially love that a lot of people from the queer scene come to our events. It matters to us that people feel welcome regardless of their sexual orientation or identity.
And we notice again and again that the mix works. It’s rare for anyone to stay completely to themselves.
In the end, it matters less to us whether someone has ten years of BDSM experience or just became curious. What matters is that people treat each other with respect and want to share a special evening together.
Our guests keep surprising us with requests, and it’s on us to find solutions and create new spaces for them, from rare but serious allergies to entire scenarios like a submissive at the Blindfolded Party who absolutely can’t know where the venue is or what the space looks like until the blindfold comes off. We make a lot of it work.
What do you hope for with Kinky Escapes in the coming years?
For the coming years, we mostly hope we get to keep putting on great events while holding on to what’s mattered to us so far.
Of course we’re happy when Kinky Escapes keeps growing, when new people come to our events and some of them become regulars. At the same time, our existing regulars matter a great deal to us. It’s a good feeling to keep seeing the same people at our events and to notice that they enjoy coming back.
This year, for example, we held a new event at a new club. It went over really well, and we get to repeat it next year. To us, that shows Kinky Escapes keeps developing.
We want to keep going down this path: trying new locations, developing new concepts, and continuing to come up with things that we ourselves find exciting.
We definitely still have a few ideas in mind. How far it all grows, we’ll see. But that constant evolving is a big part of what makes it fun for us.
More about Kinky Escapes, and especially their upcoming events, can be found here.
(c) Onlyfluff Productions
