The Hanky Code, Explained: What Every Color Flags and How to Wear It

The hanky code is a way of telling a room full of strangers what you're into without saying a word. A colored handkerchief in the back pocket announces the kink; which pocket it's in announces the role. It came out of the gay leather bars of New York and San Francisco in the early 1970s, got printed on a card at a leather shop, and has been argued over, expanded and reinvented ever since. Here's how it works, what the colors stand for, and how we've put it on clothes you can wear anywhere.

Left or right

The rule that everything else hangs on: left pocket is the top, right pocket is the bottom. Left gives, right receives. A yellow hanky on the left says you'll piss on someone; the same hanky on the right says you want to be pissed on. Wear it in both pockets and you're versatile. Around the neck or wrist has come to signal the same thing as both pockets, though in a bar the back pocket is still what people look at first.

Where it came from

The story most people tell starts in 1970, when a Village Voice writer joked that gay men in New York were wearing colored hankies to signal what they wanted. Within a couple of years a leather shop in San Francisco had printed a chart and the joke was a system. Bob Damron's Address Book, the gay travel guide, carried a code chart from the mid-1970s, and by the end of the decade a dozen colors were in use coast to coast. The list grew through the 1980s to the point where nobody could remember all of it, which is why every bar and every chart disagrees on the rare colors. The core dozen have stayed stable for fifty years.

The colors that matter

Beige is the one that matters most around here: the rimming flag. If you own a rim seat you already fly it.

Two colors at once

Some people want two things and don't want two hankies. The brown and yellow two-tone says scat and piss both, and the order of the stripes tells you which comes first. We print both combinations, brown-over-yellow and yellow-over-brown, on shorts, boxers, rimming mats and towels so you can flag the exact version of filthy you're after.

Wearing the code without a hanky

A hanky in a pocket works at a leather bar. It doesn't do much at the gym, the beach, a pool party or a play party where the pockets are the first thing to come off. So we print the code on the clothes. Our hanky code athletic shorts and mesh sport shorts are the color head to toe: yellow, red, brown, orange, black and white, and the two brown-and-yellow combos. The boxer briefs do the same in yellow, red, brown, orange, black and both combos, with a pouch and black stitching. When the whole garment is the color, pocket side goes out the window, so the color flags the kink and you say the rest with a look or a word. Plenty of people wear them because they like the color and the conversation it starts.

On the floor

The code moved onto rimming gear because the gear is where the color does its job. A hanky code fluid proof rimming mat in yellow on the floor at a play party tells everyone walking past what that corner is for. Twenty-four by seventy inches, cushioned microfiber top, waterproof layer, non-slip rubber base, in every core color. The hanky code towels do the same in a softer, more absorbent form, in two sizes.

A few things people misread about the code

Nobody is checking a chart at the bar. The core colors (yellow, red, brown, black, dark blue, light blue, orange) are universal; past that, ask. The code is an opener, not a contract, so flagging red doesn't put you on the hook to get fisted by whoever walks over. And the rare colors vary by city, by decade and by who printed the card, so if you're flagging something past the core list, expect to explain it. That's half the fun.

Shop the code

Everything we make in the code is in the Hanky Code collection: shorts, boxers, mats and towels, made to order and shipped discreetly.