Sotiris Trechas, aka The Dreamer, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Athens, Greece, from where he publishes Fluffer Everyday magazine.

Fluffer Everyday is a sexy platform aiming to make your day feel more naughty, presenting a sex positive view of fantasy and roleplay that manages to be both sweet and sexy. We speak to him as the first of a new zine series titled Fluffer Body launches, starting with that fetish of fetishes, Feet.

Just got to the studio and about to send the online orders of the weekend! Very busy day today, I am on my second coffee already. Listening to Bonobo ‘The North Borders’—such a masterpiece. I am excited for lunch because my mum just dropped off her infamous lasagna, which I will enjoy with the latest ‘Drag Race’ episode which I haven’t had time to watch yet. After that I have a Fluffer photoshoot planned and need to bounce. 

Describe your work environment
I have this amazing space in Petralona, a central neighborhood of Athens. It’s the headquarters of everything Dreamer & Fluffer Everyday. Besides the magazine I have a brand and I do screenprinting, so besides a working studio, this space works as a showroom and meeting point.

The window sees right to the street, which is not fascinating, but I like to live in my little fabulous bubble so I have big curtains to provide the privacy that I need. I usually blast Madonna and dance like a child, that’s why the curtains are necessary.

Which magazine do you first remember?
Besides comics, I was obsessed with this greek magazine called Nitro. It was the peak of the media in the noughties. Something Playboy and Interview magazine, I guess. But like, very Greek.

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine?
I am obsessed with magazines. I have more than thousand. I kid you not. Ever since I was a kid, my dream was to have my own magazine, so I was collecting all kinds of magazines and study them thoroughly. I actually learned photoshop designing fake magazine covers!

The ONE magazine that I treat as a treasure is the first issue of Horst magazine. It was published in 2011 and it got only three issues I think. The tag line they used was “naked fashion” and it was very gay and my 21 year old self found it extremely inspiring. It’s very bold, and the design elements are still so beautiful. I flip through it regularly to get ideas and inspiration.

What other piece of media would you recommend? And why?
I love Pinterest. It feels like early instagram, before all the reel bullshit came to be. I think it’s the best way to get inspiration nowadays. I am a Tumblr kind of guy, but unfortunately that’s dead now—I miss the Tumblr days so much! I also appreciate YouTube a lot, but not for inspiration. Mostly to keep up to date with what’s happening with all the shows, games and other pop culture stuff that I like. I find traditional TV boring and in a desperate need of a change. And I am extremely bored of podcasts.

Describe Fluffer Everyday in three words
Fantasies becoming obsessions. That was the tagline I was using for the first format of the magazine. I still think it represents greatly the idea behind it.

What’s your favourite body part?
I do love hands! The thicker the better. You can tell a lot about someone from their hands.

What inspired you to start such a defiantly sex-positive magazine?
That is a big question. My first job was in a video club. We had a great selection of porn movies, and as you can guess, I had seen most of them. You know, ‘quality control.’

The thing is that I never saw something that would speak to me in volumes. There was always something missing. There weren’t many layers, and I found that superficial and boring. Growing up, I was struggling a lot with my sexuality, I always felt kinda lost. Neither here, nor there. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in the suburbs of Athens, and I had no one that I could relate to. I was always looking for this sense of community. Everyone was trying to label me in ways that I wouldn’t appreciate, something that apparently happens to many people out there. And I felt that all these porn movies were done under all these labels that were restricting me. So I had the need to see something different.

Some years later, life happened and I became a photographer. I have had the chance to work in every major media platform in Greece and collaborate with many brands internationally. I experienced many amazing moments, but everything felt commercial and not as inspiring as I wanted. So at some point, as I was experiencing a burnout, I decided it’s time to make a change and start the magazine I was always dreaming about. I knew that it was the perfect moment to do that spicy thing that I needed to see when I was working at the video club.

Years before that, I had heard of the term fluffer and I was extremely inspired, so I knew that when the time comes, the magazine would be about that. For anyone that might not know, a fluffer is a person that works in the production of porn films, helping the actors get hard. It’s an urban legend from the 60s in America - no one actually was paid to do that. But people on the set would help out the actors in times of need - and the term fluffer was born. Amazing, right? So the idea of the magazine is to present all these fluffers that we come across, all these moments we experience in our everyday life that inspire us. Sexually, but not only. Defying genders, societal standards, labels.

The magazine helped me realize that I was not the only one feeling like this. The response of the audience was amazing! It’s been 9 years now, and I still have people on the street coming to me to tell me who is their fluffer.

Doing two covers was the way to show that this magazine is for everyone. It’s a pansexual project. In the beginning, I was naming them ‘boy cover’ and ‘girl cover’ but then decided to change it to ‘cover A’ and ‘cover B’, as I felt that boy/girl was restrictive. Being sexy means so many things, and genders should not define that. And the audience appreciates that.

Both covers are printed in 500 pieces each. I would say that both covers sell well, but the spicier the cover it is, the more it will sell. And in many cases, people buy both for collectible reasons. 

What does the new Fluffer Body zine add to the project?
So I was going through the archive of unpublished photos from previous issues and I noticed that I always take the same kind of close ups, for example feet or hands. And that is how the idea came to me. I always wanted to do a new kind of side zine for the project, with a different format, so the idea of the Fluffer Body came to be.

Besides the size, it’s different from the main serialization because it’s a lot more specific. The exciting thing is that everybody has a different favorite body part, so there are so many issues to do! The idea is to make a bundle later on, forming the actual body. The feet had to be the first one because it’s literally the biggest fetish that there is. And this has been the best selling magazine so far! The next one will be about ears, and I am very excited!

Please show us one spread that sums up how the magazine works, and gives a sense of what the reader can expect from the mag.
This is a spread from the interview with Benjamin, aka @Personne_Public, a feet enthusiast. Inside Fluffer Feet you will find foot pictures in everyday settings, but also interviews and stimulating stories, shinning a light in the sexual energy of the body part.

What has publishing magazines taught you that may be helpful to anyone else planning to launch one?
I approach every issue as writing a thesis on the university, so I do research, I study, I talk with so many people. And I feel like I become a better human as I do so. Also I do everything myself, from taking the pictures and the overall production of the content, to putting the magazine in the plastic bags it is shipped in, and that is because I just wanted to learn how to do everything and hone all these skills.

For everyone that wants to start a magazine, I would say, just do it! We are living in a day and age where paper is a luxury item and a relic, so my advice would be to go full out. Go as crazy as you want. Creating a magazine is a creative outlet, as painting, dancing, or singing. So express yourself, and I guaranty you, there is a market for what you will create. Do the math right and this could be how you pay your bills.

What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
It’s a very busy period with a million things going on! I have a very sexy photoshoot for the new issue on Wednesday in Athens, flying to Paris to DJ on Friday, and back to Athens on Saturday for Purple Night, my club night that I have been organizing for almost a decade now. But what I am looking forward to the most is spending Sunday on the sofa watching ‘Golden Girls’ and eating pizza.

fluffereveryday.com 

instagram.com/thedreamer_gr