The Sportsheets Vibrating Velvet Harness is composed mostly of nylon straps, so when I touch/look at/wear it, all I can think about is backpacks. It makes me think of middle school, of buying a JanSport to be hip, of adjusting it to hang at just the socially acceptable position, then packing it with school supplies and adorning it with keychains.
Obviously, this is not the best memory to be replaying whenever you’re strapping on a dildo. But replay it does, as I adjust one, two, three, four straps, two around my legs and one around my waist (it fits up to 60″ hips). And I remember, yet again, that nylon scratches as it goes on, and never feels good. It’s not horribly uncomfortable, but it’s certainly not soft. I don’t enjoy the feeling of it against my skin.
Of course, the Velvet Harness looks a lot nicer on a mannequin/mannequin-like blonde model woman than it does on me. On me, a real human, the velvet part bunches up and rests very, very low. Honestly, it looks pretty dumb. It does not make me feel sexy at all. If I adjust the waist strap around my ass instead of my waist, I can get it to sit a little higher, but not by a lot.
The three O-rings for the Velvet Harness (1.5″, 1.75″, and 2″ in diameter) are black and made of rubber. This is all well and good until you go to actually change the O-ring. To do this, you have to unsnap four straps, and the snaps are a complete bitch. There is only a sliver of nylon past the end of each metal snap, so there is nothing to grab onto while pulling. One of the snaps took me a good five minutes to unsnap, and now all the snap straps are fraying at the ends. I can’t even imagine trying to accomplish this task in the middle of a play, let alone with sweaty fingers. Plus, undoing the straps causes them to slip out of their slots in the velvet part.
Basically, you don’t want to be changing the O-ring unless you are prepared for frustration and for the harness to fall into disarray. So, uh, choose your O-ring wisely? And if you’re planning on unsnapping one of the snaps to put a dildo in, have fun trying to keep the strap from sliding out of its slot. Bottom line: no way in hell will you ever look suave changing the O-ring or dildo in the Velvet Harness.
The fact that the O-rings are rubber means they are slightly stretchy, which can be nice if you want to squeeze a dildo through. However, rubber also means less support for each dildo than a metal O-ring would provide. The first dildo I put in the Velvet Harness was the Tantus Sherbet, which promptly hung nearly vertically. I had more success with the Tantus Curve because of the Curve’s hefty base and its curved shaft. Most dildos put into this harness, though, do not look nearly as perky as I hoped they would, and I’m guessing this could cause some issues with penetrating the right spot on a partner.
In a last-ditch effort to save itself, the Velvet Harness comes with a watch battery bullet. Mine was dead (surprise surprise — 75% of the ones I receive are D.O.A.), so I used one that wasn’t. It fits into a pocket in the velvet, supposedly to vibrate the wearer’s clit. As you might suspect, this doesn’t happen. For me, it vibrated too high (go figure, even though the harness was riding very low), and the strength of the bullet left a lot to be desired, especially through the velvet.
The We-Vibe Tango and Screaming O Vooom are better, but really, even a perfectly-placed bullet could not save this harness. Nothing about it worked the way it should’ve. I don’t have to fuck someone with it to know that it would kind-of suck. I’m sure I could get a dildo into an orifice of some kind and thrust sufficiently, but it would not be comfortable, easy, or fun.
The Vibrating Velvet Harness is available at Smitten Kitten, SheVibe, Babeland, and Good Vibes.