A growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is threatening the safety and livelihoods of queer people across the United States; at the moment, the American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 491 such bills, many of which target trans people or aim to ban or censor drag performances.
In queer communities and beyond, however, drag isn’t limited to drag shows. All self-presentation is a kind of performance of identity, and at its most fundamental, that’s what drag is too. The ways we adorn ourselves—whether we’re covered in tattoos or draped in quiet luxury—are all forms of costume, all projections of some persona. As RuPaul once famously said: “We are all born naked, and the rest is drag.”
In that spirit, we spoke to seven drag artists and performers about the costumes they wear by day—as real-estate agents, coders, footwear designers—as well as onstage by night. Read through to discover their stories.
Alika—Footwear Designer and (Her Own) Personal Muse
I work in mass-market fashion, and when I started I thought I could push the boundaries with all of these ideas I had. I soon realized that my personal aesthetic was never going to fit into the brand I was designing for, so I started leaning more into drag as my creative outlet. I started treating my drag as someone I could create from start to finish.
I used to go by Panthera Lush, and I’m transitioning away from that name right now. The older I get—I just turned 30 last November—the more I get into the mindset that my drag feels special because it’s all me. I’ve finally found my aesthetic and what makes me unique, so I don’t need to be named something different and use it as a shield. That’s what drag is good for, to uncover these parts of yourself you’re usually too shy to show. It’s the same with fashion, you use it as an armor to portray something you might not even know is inside of you, but I’m not hiding anymore.
The gap between my everyday presentation and my drag is slowly closing. I’m becoming more confident with myself the longer I live in the city. I’d say that, for now, the main difference is the fact that when I’m in drag there’s always a cohesiveness to a certain look that I’m trying to portray, and otherwise I like to mix themes. Dressing up is not an animal instinct. We’re making a choice every single day and every single moment about how we are presenting ourselves to the world, and drag is an extension of that. Drag is a hyper-realized version of your self-presentation.
I work in corporate America, and that is 100% drag too. When I go into the office, I want to look presentable but still like myself. Maybe I’m not wearing khakis and a blue button-down, but I can play into the desire to impress people without feeling the need to fit in their world. I can be polished and professional in my own way, and that is something that everyone does. It’s all our own creation, a type of drag in its own way.
Wolfgang—The Queen With a (Realty) License to Serve
When I’m dressed as Wolfgang, people come to me and ask me for photos and are attentive to me. When I’m working real estate, I’m the one pleasing clients and being complimentary. Either way, they’re both performances and versions of myself.
Wolfgang taps into my German heritage. I idolized Claudia Schiffer, Hedi Klum, and all of these beautiful and hyperfeminine supermodels, even if Wolfgang has become a little more androgynous and fashion-forward over time. I like to combine the masculine and feminine side of things. A lot of people say that drag is their escape or that their entire persona is different in drag, but I’m not escaping and Wolfgang is very similar to Dylan. The difference is that Dylan sells houses and is a little bit more reserved.
Real estate is not easy, despite the impression people get from watching Selling Sunset. It’s literally a different kind of drag. I’ve always been a people person, but I have to put on a character at all times in order to be good. My real-estate day drag is crazy—a full suit, which I hate, and I’m making sure to have a smile on my face and be in a good mood to help my clients. It’s a persona, just like Wolfgang is.
Many of the people I engage with through work are Republican or more conservative. It’s not our job as queer people to educate them, but I feel like when we open their minds, we help dispel this hate and close-mindedness because all of that is taught and can be unlearned too. A lot of times what they’re missing is authenticity, so they replace it with hatred. When you don’t live as your authentic self, it does something to you and what comes out is negativity projected on other people. People who don’t support us simply have never given themselves the chance to know us and know what drag is or can be.
Anna Lytical—Drag Queen in STEM (and Coder at Google)
When I was a kid, my dad would always tell me to “use my Pokémon voice” to tell him about things I clearly found dull. He noticed I spoke up when I talked about Pokémon because it made me really excited. Anna Lytical is my Pokémon voice. I use drag as a way to talk about things I’m really passionate about. I grew up doing theater and music, and after moving back to New York City after college, I realized that I needed some kind of creative outlet.
Through drag, I explored creative projects with my hands: I learned to style wigs, sew, do makeup, but above all I found a framework to express myself—that it was within a queer space was an added bonus. There aren’t that many flamboyant queer people in STEM—there aren’t even that many women in STEM. But doing drag also unlocked a lot more ways for me to express myself with the things I put on. What I wear every day to work is pretty casual, but I’ve come to appreciate a nicer version of basics, like a pair of luxury sneakers that give me an extra pep in my step, the way Anna has. I love throwing on a little concealer, filling my brows a bit, or bringing more jewelry into the mix.
Drag is about intention. It’s taking some kind of expectation and subverting, exaggerating, or highlighting it. There are so many levers we can pull to change how we look. Finding time to express yourself can also teach you about yourself. It shows you what makes you uncomfortable and allows you the space to ask yourself why. I wore a bright pink shirt to work the other day, and one of my coworkers noted that other guys on the team tend to wear dull colors. Part of me is like, It’s just a pink shirt, who cares? It’s interesting how taking that step to just be yourself shakes a boundary or an expectation a little bit. That’s what drag does, at the end of the day, and it happens whether I’m in my everyday drag or wearing a wig.
Maxxx Pleasure—Digital Marketer by Day, Glam-Rock King by Night
I’ve always experienced drag as a double life—basically Clark Kent going to The Daily Planet, except I have a mustache and not a pair of glasses. I started performing regularly in 2016, which is about the same time that I became a working adult, so I’ve always had to find the balance between having a more conventional job and doing drag. I’d pack my makeup and look to go to the gig after work and not get home until 5 a.m.
What drew me to drag was more the performance than the gender transformation, so at first the persona was an afterthought. Once I left college, I thought about making Maxxx a rocker type of guy because that’s the kind of masculinity that seems fun both to perform and for an audience to watch. Now I’m at the point where I feel my most authentic self as Maxxx. I recently came out as a lesbian, and stepping into the masculinity that can come with being a dyke is something that has been really empowering for me. There’s a lot of overlap with Maxxx there too.
A few months ago, I left the company I was working at for seven years and started a new job. When I started going to the office, in Chelsea, I noticed how stylish people are, so that had me wondering what I wanted my day drag to be. I want to present myself as professional and trustworthy but in a way that reflects my personality so that if there are other queer people at the office, they look at me and know. I look at Maxxx and look at my inspirations—Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix—and just take the loose button-down shirts and tight striped pants and put them together. That’s what people do every day, anyway: build something based on what they want to look like and what they want to communicate.
A lot of people brush drag kings to the side. Our understanding as a society is that women are for looking at and masculinity and men aren’t necessarily interesting or entertaining. But it’s nice to use drag to change those perspectives. Drag is at its best when it doesn’t play by the rules.
Dev Doee—Part-Time Creative Director, Full-Time Diva
I identify as transfemme, and I’ve always been very gender-expansive and -fluid. I’ve always done drag one way or another, even without knowing it: I used to be a dancer and actor, and as a performer I would often wear wigs and makeup. When the pandemic hit, I wanted to commit to drag and learn the craft and become part of the community. I did a competition in Brooklyn called “Are You the Next Diva?” with a friend of mine, and we won.
My style is inspired by video-game characters and divas. I love women who toe the lines of gender and are the badass, fighter type, so I like tomboy fashion. Sometimes we complicate and pervert what drag is, but it’s really creating the most influential, creative, and authentic version of yourself in that moment, and we all strive for that. Everyone can and should do drag—people who don’t express themselves through their presentation do a disservice to themselves.
I work at the Ali Forney Center, which supports homeless LGBTQ+ youth. I lead the creative agency, so I do a lot of programming for galas and events, run social media, and anything creative. It’s a queer space, so my drag is very celebrated and uplifted. When we did this shoot, it turned into a Dev meet-and-greet—I took photos with everyone in the office, and some people didn’t even realize it was me. With drag and transness under attack, it’s really incredible to be in an affirming space that values what I do because a lot of people don’t have that.
As someone who was growing up queer and didn’t always know that I was queer and trans, I needed people to look to who lived authentically, spoke their mind, and lived in their truth. In a lot of ways, just existing, just going to the gig with a smile on my face, and showing people that this life can be beautiful and joyful, is an important form of protest and even education. We are human beings. Drag is an art form that can look and feel so many different ways.
Babylon From the Haus of Gods…and That One NYC Hospital
A few years ago, my friends asked me if I was on a TV show and didn’t tell them—and it was because they thought I looked like this queen on Drag Race (who really I look nothing like!). That’s when I started watching the show, and I thought it looked fun. So I bought a little shake-and-go wig, some makeup, and tried out drag for the first time. I looked gross, but the feeling was great. I’ve been doing it ever since.
Babylon is very “Alien Superstar”—unlike my personal style, which is very muted and more about basics. When I’m out of drag, my mind races a lot. Drag has become a way of coping with my anxiety. Over time, I’ve come to feel more like myself outside of drag. I’ve felt pressure as a drag queen to conform to specific female beauty standards while also trying to exist as a boy outside of drag. That pressure was making me not okay, so I’ve stepped back a little to find myself and my comfort and translate that back into my drag. My mustache stays on, for example, and now I like to play up both the masculine and the feminine energy.
My day job is extremely boring. I’m a designer for a hospital, and my work is always very clean and simple and usually based on templates. This is why when I’m stoning or doing drag, I go full in to create something entirely new. I enjoy the politics of corporate life because it’s like drag in its own way. The way you dress for work, the way you act in that space, it’s a fun little game for me. I guess that’s why, to an extent, I think everything really is drag because it’s less about putting on a wig and makeup and more about looking the part and fulfilling the assignment. We all do that when we dress for work to play that part.
Meet Your Photographer, Necklace—a.k.a. Nicholas Needham
My work revolves around queer stories, and I very often take photos of drag performers. I love to get to work with these people to create universes, and something I really take pride in is that the photos often feel like the way they want to be seen. Doing drag versus taking images of it is very different. I am a completely different person in a wig than I am in a baseball cap holding a camera, and I’m usually in hyper-masculine boy drag when I’m shooting. But what doing both has taught me is to be mindful and aware of how my talent feels. I know what it’s like to walk around the street in drag, and it doesn’t always make me the most comfortable. I like to always keep that in mind and communicate with my talent.
I’m such a big believer in the idea that everything is drag. I love to perform masculinity in my day drag, for example. I love putting on a baseball hat, soccer shorts, and some garbage truck T-shirt. Last year I went to a party at the Brooklyn Museum, and I showed up in a white tank top, gray sweatpants with boxers showing, sneakers, and a Yankees cap. That’s head-to-toe drag for me too.
It’s been a scary time to be around. There’s so much fear in our community, and it’s all rightfully placed. The point of the things we do, like drag or performing, is that they are joyful. My work is about spreading joy and showing people, queer people, in the way they deserve to be seen: as beautiful, dignified, talented stars. The more of us who aren’t afraid to use our voices to say that, the better off we’ll be. All the queer people I know, we just spend all our time building each other up. We love each other so deeply and are constantly looking to create family, community, and opportunities for each other. There’s this whole narrative that we’re secretly trying to tear down society, but we’re just trying to build it.
