a dragazine
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jimbo
SASHA
YVIE
JOE
Leigh Bowery Jimbo Cherry Valentine Naomi Smalls Dovima Nurmi Charity Kase Louisanna Purchase Gottmik
My drag has developed into something visceral and raw, something I no longer want to have to prove to people. I firmly believe that drag exists on a spectrum, just like gender and sexual identities. The expression and definition of drag is subjective. There is a continuum from high femme housewife, to a butched up stud, to campy sex act mimicking, gender role mocking, gender role enforcing, gender fucking, to becoming something else entirely.
... the gritty basement gigs, underground shows, apartment parties, and student run gigs with shitty lighting and music that’s way too loud strike an entirely different chord. These stripped down, raw performances are inherently anarchistic, they spit on the idea that drag is about being beautiful and idealizing versions of binary genders. These shows effectively give the finger to what people think they know about drag, drag queens, and drag kings and I hope that’s what I accomplish with my own drag, it’s what I aim for. I want to shock the audience, but I also want to shock the system. - "Nico Santamorena's Drag Manifesto", from Dragging by Shaka McGlotten
Dovima
NURMI
Green-eyed and bushy-haired, Dovima Nurmi's 60s-inspired look seems at first innocent and sweet. Its pastel colour palette is subtle but effective, and, combined with the boyish mod silhouette seems gentle and ladylike, complete with delicate tulle gloves and a matching silk hairband. However, upon closer inspection, the look has its roots in something more sinister. The filthy, gruesome teeth and odd, staring eyes create the impression of something evil.
Moreover, the initially hyperfeminine-seeming look has elements of a menswear collar, a row of buttons including on the cuffs, and an androgynous body shape.
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Unlike most of the other looks in this lineup, Cherry Valentine’s Krampus look bedazzles with its rhinestoned beauty and polished perfection. A black latex bodysuit with fur details, Valentine’s take on Christmas is unlike any other. Two huge black horns emerging from her smooth head, and a chainhooked bag of “gifts” by her side. As always, her makeup is geometrically precise in this look, the symmetry of the rhinestones in her face mirroring the look itself; and the trailing Chrismassy coat gives a nod to the season Valentine’s success in this look shows us both that Christmas can be dragged up and that it can be made horrific, harness, horns, multiple eyes and all.
Cherry Valentine
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sa
r
e l v o a u h s
Slowly, the monster discards its shell and emerges, spiky and impossible, black claws clutching at the air. Sasha Velour’s iconic Season 9 crowning look, with its pointed arm details and intricate reptile skin texture was inspired, according to designer Diego Montoya, by a vision of a “Future Egg Queen.” “I wanted her to look really regal but also really aggressive, like a futuristic drag monster,” said Montoya. This can be seen in the contrasting patterns of the top half, as well as the textural mix of alligator skin pattern, ostrich feather and smooth fabric. “Uniformity is not very interesting or sustainable - it's boring,” says Sasha. Although monochromatic, nothing about the dress is uniform. The chaotic detail of the top half and loose skirt silhouette of the bottom half combine the glam and punk incredibly well.
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Although overall relatively simple, as Sasha Velour’s looks often are, each detail is executed to perfection and complemented by flawless graphic makeup. Flat-chested but padded, Sasha’s figure toes the already faint line between genders. Somehow simultaneously historical and futuristic, the garment with its semi-sheer detailing and limp tassel earrings is unlike anything mainstream drag has seen before. Finally, the solid white colour cleanly contrasts the jewel red lips and dark nails, completing .
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Fan overall stunning, regal creation fit for a misfit
futuristic
egg queen
C h a rit y K a s e Charity conveys her take on Elizabethan fashion in this look, with its pareddown but garish overthe-top quality. Her skin is sheet-white, with a standout red lip, jagged teeth and angular eyeshadow, making her seem like a set of sneering facial features floating in a white sky. The eyes, with their white contacts, are unusual but stand out. The hair itself, with its frizzy red quality is
Q ueen Liz
very Queen Elizabeth I quality, complemented by a raised lacy collar and pearl necklace. Overall, the look bears the impression of a ghoul or vampire, a creature of the night hiding in plain sight, with an impeccable taste in fashion and gorgeous makeup. Waiting to strike.
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Staggering onto the runway, Gottmik’s body bag look from Drag Race Season 13’s “Bag Ball” seems a family-friendly plushy take on Dragula. With neutral makeup, a dark eye and wet, slicked hair, the look is at once sexy and revolting, with her innards spilling out of an airbrushed, blue-veined bodysuit.
A “D.O.A.”-sprayed clear coat hangs off her frame, and she sheds it to reveal a long, dangling intestine piece swaying in front of her. Gottmik said, of the look, “It’s scary, but glamorous. Marco Marco literally carved the organs out of foam, and
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we found fabric dyed to look like intestines. Designed by Marco Marco, with nails by Queen Custom Claws, the look is both expensive and rough around the edges; the perfect, creepy complement to a homogenously beautiful ball.
Naomi Smalls
angelic Prince 07
“When doves cry,” sings Prince in his iconic 1984 song of the same name. More than thirty years later, a glam incarnation of Prince’s decade-defining gender-bent look makes an appearance in Drag Race All Stars 4. In a “fashion does pop does androgyny” take on alternative drag, Naomi Smalls struts the runway in a lacy, billowy, Princeinspired angelic white look. From the tip of the beehive of tight black curls to the doily edge of the white socks, Naomi serves an impeccably conceptualised tribute to the man who brought androgyny to pop. Notably, her Prince is sweeterfaced, spotless, sweatless. What she lacks in frenzy and fury, she more than makes up for in artistic vision.
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A single rhinestone tear drips from her eye, and her precise makeup is at once Prince-esque and iconically Naomi. The hands ending in fingerless gloves rest atop a heavily 80s-inspired purple guitar, printed with the symbol for gender non-conformity. Padless and flat-chested as she always is, Naomi spotlights not only her unique style of drag, but also the generations of gender non-conforming children inspired by Prince to experiment with their gender expression. Unlike many of the other looks in this magazine, Naomi’s take on androgyny (here, “boy drag”) is pure glam tempered with rock-n-roll spirit.
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Unlike most of Leigh Bowery’s other looks, this yellow lightbulb look feels brighter and more vivacious, less dragged down by the dark excesses of club fashion. With a harness fastening two lightbulbs to either side of their face, and a powder-blue full-body makeup, Bowery appears surreally punk in this look. However, it’s not without its touches of beauty and glamour: the ostrich feather trim at the end of the sleeves, the cropped gloves, the gentle hue of yellow. This contrasts the rigid masculinity of Bowery’s bald head, thickly set green eyebrows and strange square lip.
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Hilton Als says, of Bowery’s influence in fashion, drag, and nightlife: “Four years after his death, bits and pieces of his look are still being appropriated by other designers, and his importance as an artist with an unclassifiable oeuvre is still being discussed...”
Horrific, unusual and arrestingly beautiful, Joe Black’s “Monster Mashup” pays homage to the spooky subculture of British drag. The look was inspired by Brighton’s “Disco Nosferatu” Arran Shurvinton, and the white-faced makeup with extended ear
As Shurvinton says, for “a gender non-binary creature the options are limitless”. Black’s gnarly, pointed fangs and cateye contact lenses complete the illusion of being a creature of the night.
prosthetics provides a clear reference point.
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Joe
Black
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As a finishing touch, the gloves with talon extensions and 1920s finger-wave wig make it quintessentially Joe Black.
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Huge-lipped and radioactive, Yvie’s look itself is extremely unique, despite its multiple reference points. The cartoonish, huge eyelashes and lips are complemented with the black background of the bodysuit. The hourglass silhouette, latex heeled boots and neon hair are drag staples, providing an interesting
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contrast to the genderless monster housed within them. As a whole, the costume is exceptionally club kid in silhouette and material, possibly a reference to Leigh Bowery’s iconic queer fashion of the 80s and 90s club scene. The nuclear yellow spills cascading over the dark fabric are not only iconically Bowery, but also create an interesting and dynamic shape in movement, paying homage to the club kid aesthetic, described as “androgyny in monochrome”. In this look, Yvie’s beauty is both an invitation and a warning.
This look by Louisianna Purchase perfects the semblance of innocence. The puffy-shoulder silhouette, the coiffed black hair, the classic red lip and the long, pointed nails.
But it’s the details which belie its alt strangeness the staring contacts in the ghost-white face, the glowing eyes from the pram, her pointed Dracula teeth.
Louisianna Purchase
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The look seems to be inspired by 1800s leg-omutton sleeve silhouettes, but in its pleather avatar, seems edgy and uniquely modern. Louisianna’s message seems to be that, even in the regular, resides the sinister, the odd and the bloodthirsty. Playing with our expectations by subverting classic glamour, she depicts a compelling, if creepy, nanny out for blood.
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VENEREAL WORLD 17
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RFF
armaan bamzai (twt @sweettooff) rohini sarkar (ig @clrmoirose) ananya mavinkurve (ig @ananyamav)