A Gay Brand Endured, and Evolved. So Did Its Founders.

Fashion changes. Jockstraps, not so much.

Those are fighting words to David Lauterstein and Frederick Kearney, husbands and founders of the sex-meets-street brand Nasty Pig. For 30 years, Mr. Lauterstein and Mr. Kearney have reimagined what jockstraps, harnesses and other fetish-inspired apparel can be, and turned their company into a household name — if your house is a West Hollywood bungalow or Fire Island share.

This week, Mr. Lauterstein released “Sodomy Gods,” a memoir that traces in soul-baring and sexually frank detail his 31-year relationship with Mr. Kearney, and how they transformed Nasty Pig into one of the most recognizable gay clothing brands on the market, worn by celebrities such as Madonna and Frank Ocean.

During a recent interview at the company’s Manhattan design studio on West 28th Street — in what longtime customers would insist is Chelsea and deny is Hudson Yards — Mr. Lauterstein, 55, was in head-to-toe, darkroom-black Nasty Pig: T-shirt, shorts, garters, socks, boots. Mr. Kearney, 63, had on a chest-hugging top in black and white with the logo in blood red.

Mr. Lauterstein is the chattier, less filtered of the two. In his book, he writes candidly about his sex life and drug use. He said he hoped his memoir would be an educational and entertaining time capsule about the brand but also about 1990s gay New York, with remembrances of the kind “our ancestors couldn’t pass down to us because we lost a lot of them” to AIDS.

Mr. Lauterstein and Mr. Kearney share a sex-positive sartorial vision for the brand, but divide daily responsibilities as chief executive and creative director, respectively. (“I’m concept, he’s detail,” Mr. Lauterstein explained.) The couple declined to discuss sales, though Mr. Lauterstein allowed that “Fred and I are terrible capitalists.”