All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
When Kim Petras became the first transgender artist to win a Grammy back in 2023, she and her cowinner Sam Smith wore matching head-to-toe scarlet red looks to accept their awards. On her lips was a distinct shade of red lipstick—a MAC lipstick. Now, just over a year later, Petras is joining the iconic beauty brand as the face of the even more iconic Viva Glam campaign, and on its 30th birthday, no less.
Viva Glam was established back in 1994, when MAC founders Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo looked to find a way to merge their passion for makeup with their concern for their community, which had been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic for just over a decade at that point. Thus the MAC AIDS Fund was born and, with it, the first Viva Glam lipstick and its debut campaign, starring none other than RuPaul. Thirty years later, Viva Glam has raised over half a billion dollars for AIDS research and is now expanding the scope of its mission to raise funds to support gender, racial, and environmental equality with a fresh lineup of lipsticks ranging from the original (Viva Heart, formerly known as Viva Glam I) to the brand-new Viva Equality, a delicious mid-tone neutral shade. Who knew lipstick could be this intersectional?
Since her breakthrough in 2017 with her viral hit single “I Don’t Want It at All,” Petras became not only a mainstay on your favorite gay bar’s playlist, but also a flag-bearer for the queer community as it pertains to trans visibility. She makes the kind of pop that is as joyful as it is hypnotizing, and when she sings, Petras sings to you rather than at you—something the LGBTQ+ community hasn’t always experienced, despite our well-established love for pop stars. This moment cements Petras as part of queer pop-culture iconography, and ahead of its launch, she sat down for a chat with Vogue to discuss what it means to front this campaign and what glam and makeup have meant to her as both a person and a performer.
Vogue: Let’s start big. What does it mean to you to be a part of the MAC Viva Glam legacy?
I’ve loved the Viva Glam campaigns forever. Ariana [Grande], RuPaul, and especially Nicki [Minaj]’s. There have been so many good ones. I feel lucky to be able to be a part of such a good cause and something that has taught me about AIDS and how important it is to do something for it, raise funds, and help out. It’s just a really special thing for me.
I remember seeing the campaign images and then just going home and researching, and they would always be on my mood boards. I think of the AIDS epidemic and how many people were and are affected by it, and how many people are no longer with us because of it. It’s always going to be a big thing for the [LGBTQ+] community. It’s amazing that MAC helps to spread knowledge about it through makeup—something that’s fun and expressive and, for me as an artist, very important. Now, Viva Glam is also not only about AIDS, but about LGBTQ+ homelessness and other causes MAC is giving back to, all kinds of equality which I very deeply care about.
Have you worn MAC makeup before this campaign?
When I won the Grammy, I was wearing MAC. There are a lot of really big moments in my life where MAC has been present, and they’ve always been very supportive of my career. I love the team. It just felt like the perfect timing to do this. They are at half a billion dollars with the money that Viva Glam raises, so it’s very exciting to be a part of the campaign and hopefully help push this to the next level, maybe to the billion, which is why I’m wearing a billion-dollar MAC bill in the campaign.
When I saw the photos of your campaign, I immediately saw this concept of putting your money where your mouth is. I feel like it would make a good song too. Can you tell me about the campaign?
That is a very good lyric! But yes, we shot it in London, and it was fun and fab. I was wearing the best clothes, and we were so aligned in vision on everything. This is my way of dealing with something as heartbreaking as this topic [AIDS], trying to help and raise money in a way that is also fun and expressive. I think that goes for a lot of artists. We want to make people smile and look really fab and glam! So I did that, and I hope we put my money where my mouth is. I think we did.
What is your own personal relationship with beauty, lipstick, and makeup?
It has such an incredible importance and significance in my music, my music videos, and beyond that, just me as a person. I learned about makeup when I was still trying to figure out how to look a little more feminine and things like that, and I learned so many tricks and things that just made me feel much more like how I felt inside, which is what makeup can do, and what it helped me do.
I also can’t write songs without wearing makeup, which doesn’t always mean a full face. I need to have a brow or a lash or a lip or any of the above. It’s not because I’m insecure, either—it just makes me feel like I’m ready to face the world, which is such a magical thing.
We have this idea that glam is just a full face of makeup, but it can manifest in so many different aspects of our life and it can mean so many different things.
Yeah, absolutely. I love everyone’s personalized idea of that. I like to think that I have certain things that I do about my makeup that are recognizable and very me.
What would you say are some of those signatures?
If I layer lipstick with something else, I feel like that’s just for me, that no one else can wear it, and that makes me really happy. I think my brow has always been the most important thing too. I have a very specific brow that I like that works for me. I’ve had them big and tiny, and I used to overdraw them but have now figured out how to make them just right amount of slanted, and the edges go up just the right amount. No makeup artist really fully gets to do my brows—I always touch them up. That’s just my way of doing it, and no one else can really get it that way.
I was talking to some of my colleagues about what glam means, and one thing that came up is that our culture puts a lot of expectations on women in terms of what we expect you all to look like. In our community, we put a lot of expectations on trans women, especially gay men, on how you should be femme, you should be glamorous, and you should perform a certain level of glamour. I’m curious if you ever feel pressured to be extra glam because you’re a pop star or because you’re a woman?
I definitely think that with trans women and in gay culture there is a performance aspect to it. But I also think that it’s really beautiful. The way I approach everything is: Am I happy with this? I love it when people are happy with the way a look of mine turned out, but I’ve also realized the world is how you want to make it, and however you want to be is perfect. However you feel the most like yourself is right; don’t let other people’s views on beauty touch yours and your truth within that.
That’s really important to me because I’ve definitely been in places in my life where that really stung, particularly when you’re going through something personal and other people comment about your appearance. I always wished people talked a little more about how people are, if they are nice or talented or passionate, rather than just beautiful. A huge part of beauty is your personality; the accessories just bring that out and help manifest the inner self to the world. The real beauty in everyone is in them, and makeup is the best way to bring it out and let the world see.
That is a really touching and powerful way of seeing beauty and glam. I have one light-hearted question to ask you. Which of your songs makes you think the most about lipstick?
I feel like “Hillside Boys” is just a lipstick song [laughs].
And finally, where will you be wearing your Viva Glam lipstick this summer?
Around the house [laughs]. And when I’m going to the studio, but I’m also doing a couple of festivals in Europe, so definitely then too. Also on dates. It’s just such a good date lip color. It’s very “I love you, you want to marry me.”
It’s very much “you want a little kiss?”
Exactly. Mwah!
