Leggy models in Christian Louboutin heels and Wolford stockings glide from room to candlelit room. A dapper man in a custom suit eyes them while sipping Champagne by the mansion’s fireplace. A DJ plays in a corner. Oysters are slurped at the bar.
And then, in a matter of minutes, pants are off, bras are unhooked and a tangled web of nude revelers go at it on a bed plopped smack in the middle of the 12,000-square-foot home.
It’s just another night at Killing Kittens — the roving members-only sex club that professes to be “the world’s network for the sexual elite.”
On Saturday night, the kinky London-based club makes its New York debut. For $100 per woman and $250 per couple, the adventurous can spend hours sleeping with strangers in a swanky Flatiron loft rented for the evening. Cocktail attire and masks are required (though, needless to say, both will get shed rather quickly).
“It’s like ‘Eyes Wide Shut,’ but realistic,” says Gweneth Romein, 46, who works in consulting and has attended nearly 20 Killing Kittens events.
“When [my ex-boyfriend and I] hosted a party at our house [in London], we had a bed and there were these two gorgeous silver foxes and this black girl whose legs went to Tokyo, and she was just demanding everything from them . . . it’s complete carnage,” she says. “It’s like a buffet.”
And Romein, who’s been a member since the club’s 2005 start, can’t wait to be devoured — and to devour — at Killing Kittens’ first NYC party.
The carnal fellowship was founded by 6-foot, blond, 36-year-old Emma Sayle — a friend of Kate Middleton’s, whom she met when the Duchess joined Sayle’s for-charity rowing team, the Sisterhood, in 2007.
(Despite rumors, Sayle says Middleton has never been a member of the sex club. But she does insist that the royal “knew all about Killing Kittens. She thought it was funny. She was fascinated. Most girls are fascinated by it.”)
Depending on the evening’s location — from a swanky cabaret club to the London townhouse where “The King’s Speech” was filmed — members pay anywhere from $70 to $800 for entry to the debauched bashes, which are held monthly in London, Ireland, Los Angeles and, as of this weekend, NYC.
Since its inception, the club has attracted 10,000 regular partygoers, including A-list actors, British aristocrats, Formula One owners and moneyed married couples looking to spice up their sex lives.
“I’ve been to parties where people fly from Sweden on private jets loaded up with their friends because they can’t play in their own country,” says Romein, who has hooked up with everyone from a restaurant mogul to a married man whose “name is on multiple buildings in New York.”
“He’s from a well-known family in banking, shall I say.”
As of Tuesday, Sayle says 60 people have signed up for the NYC event, including a group of British female bankers who work at UBS’s Midtown office and a bevy of models.
“They all have the same mentality,” a raspy-voiced Sayle says of her members. “They’re all overachievers.”
Which makes the Big Apple a perfect fit for Killing Kittens, according to Romein, who asked that her full legal name not be included for privacy reasons.
“New York’s kinky . . . I think [Emma will] do really well in a city where people have nervous tension and people need to decompress,” says Romein, who is flying in for the party from Mississippi, where she currently resides. (She’s already planned her outfit: a new $600 Agent Provocateur ensemble, pigtails, red lips and a mask “that doesn’t fall off when you’re active.”)
Plus, as Sayle points out, “Statistically, New York is in our favor for it to work,” alluding to the city’s 53-47 female-male ratio.
“It might help with all the frustration of all those women who can’t find men,” she adds. “They can come and share the men!”
Of course, not everyone who wants to can get into a Killing Kittens party. For one, all men must be accompanied by a female.
And Sayle and her five-person team enforce a strict vetting system.
“They have to be 18 to 50. And we just ask for nice-looking people,” says Sayle, who requires potential members to submit photos for approval.
It’s not a case of everyone being supermodel quality. It’s nice-looking people taking care of themselves … We have members who want a certain look and expect a certain standard, so that’s what we need to provide.
- Killing Kittens founder Emma Sayle
“It’s not a case of everyone being supermodel quality. It’s nice-looking people taking care of themselves,” she continues. “For example, we might get someone who is a size 14 or 16 US size and they’re massive, and they send us a photo and they might be in some bondage gear, and you just say, ‘No, that’s not a pretty sight.’
“We have members who want a certain look and expect a certain standard, so that’s what we need to provide.”
One thing the club doesn’t screen for is STDs, though bowls of condoms are strewn about the parties.
Sayle, who has a 5-month-old son with her fiancé, double-Olympian field hockey player James Tindall, didn’t always spend her spare time organizing orgies.
She grew up in London, and attended the all-girls private school Downe House (Middleton was briefly a student there as well). She went on to study sports science at Birmingham University before working in p.r., where many of her clients, including porn star Ron Jeremy, were in the adult entertainment sphere.
“It just opened my eyes . . . everything was being run by guys,” says Sayle. “And it was a time when ‘Sex and the City’ had just launched and suddenly there were these girls talking about vibrators on national television. The female sexual revolution thing was going on.”
Sayle was inspired and launched Killing Kittens, named after a slang term for female masturbation.
“It’s not a sex party. It’s a place where females can try whatever they want to try. And if they want to get involved in couples, or want to try it with another girl or a group of girls . . . it’s about an experience,” says Sayle, whose house rules dictate that men cannot approach females first.
Apparently, her opulent orgies are working. Sayle says Killing Kittens brought in $1 million last year, and she’s launching an Australian branch in May. Her club boasts 43,000 online global members who use the site to network and date. She’s planning a Hamptons romp this summer at a member’s private estate.
And, Romein and Sayle say, you never know who might show up to the next party (and yes, you can still register for membership at killingkittens.com).
“Look at the society people in New York [who] have that twinkle in their eye, but are very discreet and you know nothing about their social life,” says Romein. “They’re the ones who will be there.”