Her shoes were thigh-high, bedazzled platform moon boots. Her outfit was encircled by a tutu tilted at a particularly rakish angle. Her capelet, cresting in tusklike spikes, appeared to be hand-wrought from aluminum foil.
Jeremy Scott, the fashion designer, leaned forward and fixed the contestant, Alyssa Edwards, with a look. “I will just come out of the closet here and say, This is fashion,” he said.
And because this is also “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” — one of the reality TV shows in the mini-drag empire overseen by RuPaul Charles, the self-proclaimed drag “supermodel of the world” — Ms. Edwards, a drawling diva out of Mesquite, Tex., accepted the compliment and went on to lip-sync Taylor Dayne’s “Tell It to My Heart.”
For the uninitiated, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a competition on the Logo network to find “America’s next drag superstar.” It is a campy, joyful pastiche of “Project Runway,” “America’s Next Top Model” and “America’s Got Talent,” requiring its would-be superstars to sing, dance, act, strut and lip-sync for the title. Along the way, in and out of drag, contestants design and make their own dresses, spackle on their own makeup and merrily talk trash about, and to, one another.
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Is it any wonder that it has become the fashion industry’s favorite show?
“I’ve seen every episode,” said Marc Jacobs, who, like Mr. Scott, has been a guest judge on the show. (Mr. Charles and his friend and sidekick, Michelle Visage, are two of the constant judges, with a rotating roster of regulars and guests.) “It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. There’s a lot of power in it, and I’m not a big reality TV show fan at all.”
