On a crisp November morning, I arrive at Pearl Studios, a rehearsal space in midtown Manhattan. As I reach the 12th floor and step out of the elevator, I’m drawn to the noise I hear in the room opposite. There, members of the House of Gorgeous Gucci are gathered: Lola, Rana, Zahara, Midori Monet, Hazel, Christian, Los, Jozea, Thaddeus, Kiddy, and Corey, as well as cofounders Jack Mizrahi and Kelly, are in the midst of preparing for the Porcelain Ball, held last weekend in Brooklyn.
“I come from a 30-year legacy in ballroom as a founding member of the House of Mizrahi. After decades working with the founder of the house, Andre Mizrahi, where we built so much and changed ballroom, I wanted to go in a different direction,” says Mizrahi. “I felt like a blueprint was needed of what a modern house could look like.”
Although the house was founded in 2019—making it relatively young compared to some of its ballroom cohort—Mizrahi is quick to detail its august lineage. “Pepper LaBeija is the great-grandmother of our house, who was Andre’s house mother, and Danielle Revlon was my house mother. We might be young, but we are connected to an old ballroom bloodline.” The main ball category that the house is preparing for is Face as a House, in which house members mug for a panel of judges to win the grand prize. (They’re also required to wear a showstopping outfit and “sell” the look.)
To honor the ball’s focus on sustainable fashion, the house turned to Swiss designer and upcycling mastermind Kevin Germanier. “I started off by selecting a variety of catwalk samples from my studio that had already been upcycled using unconventional materials,” says Germanier. After a flurry of Zoom calls and design proposals, the looks were shipped off to New York, where the house’s exclusive tailor, Taylor Spong, is now working away at a sewing machine, seeing to their finishing touches.
Each piece makes the house members look like walking, talking (and posing) fireworks, commanding the undivided attention of everyone in the room. “What’s special about this is that these types of samples would usually go into an archive or a museum, but now they are having a second life,” says Germanier.
Another designer tapped for the project is the London-based Leo Prothmann, who’s been asked to support the house in the Foot Eyewear category. He drew inspiration from his fall 2025 collection for the occasion, recreating a pair of upcycled thigh-high rubber boots fitted with metal bars for heels for the house’s West Coast Father, Corey. (“I’m dedicating this walk to the house’s West Coast Mother, Devine, who passed earlier this year,” Corey tells me during his fitting.) For the eyewear segment, Prothmann worked with Maxina, another London-based designer, who molded multiples of the same frame to create one extraterrestrial-looking pair of sunglasses. “Being part of this reminded me of why I create: to connect, to express, and to challenge what fashion can mean,” Prothmann says.
Next up is finalizing the choreography for the Face as a House category, a process overseen by Mizrahi and Kelly, who provide feedback when needed. Before they begin, Zahara tells me, “We have to make sure we look like one. We have to be cohesive with one another for the judges, because when we get on that floor, it’s ours.”
Just then, a soundtrack featuring Doja Cat, Katy Perry, and Cardi B blasts from the speakers, and Jozea and Los make their way onto the floor. They begin by circling one another like two territorial lions in the wild before linking hands and commencing an intense tug of war with their interlocking arms. Then, Christian prowls to the center of the duo, where they all form a line and sway their hips in sync to the beat of the music. Shortly after, Zahara and Hazel each make their way to join the trio, performing a curated series of hair flicks, facial gestures, and arm movements. After Lola weaves her way through to take her place center stage, the group—now six strong—rearranges into their final pose.
While ballroom may have its roots in 19th-century drag balls—evolving in reaction to the racism within those spaces, into a subculture for Black and brown queer people—it’s found its way into outsiders’ living rooms via documentaries such as Paris Is Burning and contemporary series including Legendary and Pose. Yet the intensive preparations that precede a ball are often overlooked.
“Whenever someone does a TV show or an interview about ballroom, this is the part that always gets missed. Here is where we show we’re more than just what’s on the ballroom floor,” says Kelly.
Echoing that idea, Mizrahi adds, “What you’re seeing here is where the magic is. The build-up to a ball is the inception of our creativity.”
It feels true enough: In a single day, I’ve witnessed a cross-fertilization of ideas and talent, a collision of craft and concepts, and countless hours of work coupled with generational insights. If the balls are the finished recipe, then this is where the ingredients come together.
As the day winds down, garment bags brimming with kaleidoscopic outfits are zipped up, boxes of impossibly high heels are packed away, and house members share their final notes with each other. I finish by asking Lola, the overall house mother, what she thinks the house’s biggest strength is. “The cornerstone of ballroom is a chosen family, which is exactly what our house is: a family,” she says. The House of Gorgeous Gucci may only be in its first decade, but it and its members are destined for 10s across the board.