Picture this: it’s 2011, and RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 has just been released. It’s Episode 1, and in typical early drag-race fashion, queens enter one by one with only “Hey girls!” or “Wow!” as their entrance lines, unlike the head-turning lines queens enter with today. The show looked almost blurry or foggy until it gained traction (and money) in Season 4. A few queens enter, and in walks Raja Gemini, wearing a hat that looks like an eye, a hot pink boa, and a black dress with no padding (*imagine audible gasps of the other queens here*). Immediately, her competitors label her as a “club kid, “relying on her looks, who has “no substance,” and cast her as an early-out (meaning she would be one of the first to be eliminated). A few months later, Raja was crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 and has since become one of the most successful queens to come from the show.
Before RuPaul’s Drag Race and in the first three seasons, drag was confined to a few boxes: “pageant queens,” “comedy queens,” and “theatre queens.” But with her win, Raja Gemini started the “look queens” revolution, which has since proved that drag and fashion are not separate entities but constantly inspire one another. She didn’t just open doors for “look queens”; Raja also made “design challenges” (challenges in which queens have to sew their own looks according to a theme) a staple of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Because design challenges didn’t just make good TV with their stressful, high-intensity nature, they also brought to light the numerous multi-talented queens who can sew alongside performing, competing, and being hilarious. And this would later catch the attention of some of the biggest names in fashion, finally giving drag queens the recognition they deserve for their influence on the industry.
Following in Raja’s footsteps as an incredible designer and seamstress was Violet Chachki, the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7. You may know Violet from her iconic tartan-reveal outfit, made in under a day in a design challenge, an all-black glitter jumpsuit that was untied to reveal its tartan underside. After Violet, Gigi Goode from Season 12, and following her, Utica and Symone (winner) of Season 13, went viral for their many high-fashion looks, both seen on the runway and created themselves in design challenges. Gottmik is also a Season 13 alum alongside Symone and Utica, but appeared again on All Stars 9. Gottmik won both of the “ball” challenges in Season 13 and All Stars 9, where queens design not one, not two, but three looks to present on the main stage. Raja, Violet, Gigi, Utica, Symone, and Gottmik do not just share the commonality of being great seamstresses. They also share the common experience of being underestimated during their seasons because they were only “look queens,” with many people thinking their fashion sense meant they were one-dimensional. Yet what has come after the show for them has proved otherwise.
Since the show, both Violet and Gottmik have become two of the faces of Jean Paul Gaultier, appearing in multiple campaigns and attending many of his shows. Violet has also appeared in a Prada campaign alongside none other than actress Sarah Paulson. Gottmik has become Paris Hilton’s makeup artist and travels with her to her DJ sets across the world. Gigi Goode and Symone appeared in a Moschino campaign together, and Gigi Goode has since moved to Paris to pursue a career in fashion. Utica became the first drag queen to appear on Project Runway, a fashion design competition, and made it to the final four. Since her time on Project Runway, Season 16 queens Q and Plane Jane were rumored to be on the following season, inviting more drag queens to the table they are so often neglected from – the fashion table.
What these queens have done isn’t just change the way that drag is executed on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but they’ve also changed the way that the world sees the connection between drag and fashion. They’ve always influenced each other, but now people know it. Last season (Season 17) of RuPaul’s Drag Race, designer Betsey Johnson appeared on the show for a design challenge episode where queens sewed looks made entirely from Betsey’s fabric and accessories. Before her, designers Bob Mackie, Jeremy Scott, and Law Roach have judged the queens’ runways. World-renowned supermodels Gigi Hadid, Winnie Harlow, Jasmine Tookes, Adriana Lima, and the iconic Naomi Campbell have, too, come on the show as judges and mentors, with Campbell even giving the queens of All Stars 7 (all-winners season) a lesson on how to walk the runway.
Look Queens have opened doors for drag queens that were previously closed. They have shown that there is so much more that goes into drag than what you see on stage. Drag is not just performance art, it’s also visual art. Drag queens perform, sing, dance, lip-sync, have the power to make anyone laugh, but they also sew, paint, design, accessorize, and style. If you’ve never watched RuPaul’s Drag Race or been to a local drag show, I encourage you to do it. And even if you’re a drag expert, I hope that this article allows you to see drag through a different lens. Because there is such a deep connection between drag and fashion, and there is so much more that goes into the looks and art drag queens wear than one would think. Thanks to “look queens,” the world is finally realizing that drag is art, drag is fashion, and drag queens are among the most talented artists and designers.