Sydney Leather Celebrates With A Stunning Leather Titleholder Competition

The Paddo RSL in Darlinghurst, Sydney came alive overnight for the 2025 Sydney Leather Titleholder competition.

Hundreds gathered for the annual event so the awarding of the highly coveted titles.

The team from the Star Observer was on the ground to chat to some of the winners.

Sydney Leather Winners Celebrate Their Community

The Sydney Leather Titleholders saw four people walk away with the 2025 titles in a fantastic night of celebrations.

Titles included Mr & Ms Leather, Sydney Bootblack and the inaugural Mx Leather, a new non-binary title starting this year.

Hosted by Brent Thorpe and Sexy Galexy the night saw the community celebrate the power and passion of the local community in Sydney.

Taking home the titles were:

The competition was part of the ten day ten day Sydney Leather festival that saw a range of events take place from the 17th to the 27th of July.

Speaking to Travis de Jonk reporter for The Star Observer Zed said winning the Mx Leather title was all about inclusion and visibility.

“I think meaningful inclusion is important,” they said.

“I think it is very much about, creating visibility of the title in the community, encouraging others to enter into it, encouraging pride of who we are and I think that promoting love and kindness in the community towards each other is really important, regardless of our gender.”

“Without community, it can be a very lonely place and so I think, having a community to come to is a sense of belonging and also being able to learn from each other in in terms of kink, you know, we all have so much knowledge, and so being able to share that knowledge with each other is, is really important.”

Sydney Mr. Leather Luis was surprised to take home the title this year.

“I didn’t expect it because all my co-competitors or I call them my siblings have been very amazing, everybody in their individual way and I thought somebody else would make the run, so I didn’t expect that.”

“For me it’s a huge honour and I feel very humbled that the community is vouching for me to do this.”

A healthcare professional, with a love for cooking, Luis was drawn to the community after seeing leeathermen at pride.

“I was so fascinated by, by the Leather men”

“You could see them, always had pride, like walking very proud, very strong. I used to be more shy I said to myself, I want to be strong,  I want to feel sexy and attractive because I when I grew up in Germany, as a Spanish person, I went through racism and like you feel always diminished.”

“You feel like you do not belong and you’re not good enough and the leather actually gave me, gave me that gift to feel valued and to feel sexy and that you’re totally fine.”

Switchress Margo took home the 2025 title for Ms Leatherm , she told the Star Observer it was “overwhelming” after only very recently joining the community.

“I still haven’t, I can’t process it” she said.

“I honestly just feel so grateful and, and humble. I’ve never had that kind of recognition before I’ve never even won anything.”

Since joining the community in January she has found plenty to love about it.

“I just love how friendly and warm the leather community are and how free of shame and liberated they are the most caring, genuine people and events like this are just wonderful because they bring everybody together.”

Hosts Brent Thorpe and Sexy Galexy helped botht he crowd and contestants enjoy their evening and feel safe and supported.

The pair enjoyed their time on stage together Sexy Galexy said. “So we come in and we just get our head around it quite quickly, and I thought this year was amazing because they had the new talent section and I thought it was so much more entertaining” she said on this years competition.

For Brent Thorpe it’s all about making sure the contestants are loved and supported through the competition.

“It was a great lineup of contestants” he said,

It’s always a great night and like when we start the night and everyone has rallied together in the dressing room the first thing I say to all of them is, you’re always working an incredibly warm room here. Like, they are the most supportive audience. They want everyone to win and they are cheering for everyone.And I just try to really bring that home to the contestants because they are nervous and terrified, and we all are, but it is an extraordinarily tight community.”

This year saw a slight change to the format, which Sexy Galexy said helped make for an even better year. “I think the show was tighter in terms of knowing what’s going to happen” she said. “The whole show was arranged in more of a slicker way, so we had, better timings for everything, we kept everything to a very tight ship and I think the arrangement led to more entertainment.”

This was also buoyed by a larger audience this year Brent said. “It was definitely a bigger audience than we had last year, although last year was a good attendance, but this year was bigger.”