Five Drag Designers You Should Know, From Underground Creators to RuPaul’s Go-To
Drag has been influencing pop culture and society at large for decades—and while queens remain unfairly under attack in our country and beyond, the art form has never been more powerful than it is at this moment. It seems like hardly a week goes by without an iteration of Drag Race airing somewhere in the world, while queens can often be seen attending fashion events, popping up onstage at concerts, gracing the cover of magazines, and generally receiving the recognition they deserve. But while queens are often the face of the movement (the cheerleaders of Pride, as they are sometimes called), there are so many others working behind the scenes within the drag ecosystem. Take the designers behind some of drag’s best looks: they show during fashion week and dress celebrities of all kinds, but when linked with a queen, they can really let their imagination run wild. Below, we’re highlighting the best in the game—from some Emmy-winning names you’ve likely heard before to an underground artist you need to familiarize yourself with soon.
Zaldy
Zaldy first met RuPaul in the ’80s, when he and his then-boyfriend, makeup artist Matthew Anderson, were traveling around the world throwing parties with Susanne Bartsch. He’d interacted with the drag queen on occasion (once to call her out for wearing the same look two nights in a row), but in Japan, RuPaul approached Zaldy and Anderson with quite the offer—help with her new album, Supermodel of the World. “We were so focused on ourselves that taking ourselves out of it and being behind the scenes was something we had to consider,” he tells W over the phone. “But we loved Ru so much, we of course said yes.”
Thirty years later, Ru and Zaldy are still working together. The designer creates every single look RuPaul wears on the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race and all of its various iterations. He has designed every dress one can imagine for RuPaul, from a slinky gold body-hugging number to the sparkly, day-glow zebra-print suit Ru wore to the Met Gala in 2019. Zaldy estimates that he creates around 80 looks for the queen every year. “That’s a Paris collection or two,” he says.
RuPaul isn’t Zaldy’s only client. He’s worked with Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, and, these days, The Chicks. He also showed at fashion week for eight seasons, sending tailored pieces down the runway that show off his range as a designer. “I really get off on doing all these different types of people,” he says.
Of course, it’s his work with Ru, on Drag Race, that has gotten him three Emmys. Zaldy has been a part of drag’s push into the mainstream since he modeled in drag for Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Levi’s in the ’90s, but the Emmys recognition still felt like a big moment in the history of the art form. “When we started the show, there was never any Emmy consideration ever,” he says. “It never felt like we were going to be truly let into that world. But the world changes and all of a sudden, you’re winning.”
Dianna DiNoble
Designer and corsetière Dianna DiNoble feels that corsets and drag are a match made in heaven. “They’re a really great base to a costume because there’s so much shape that can go into the corset,” she tells W. “Of course, it’ll provide the waist, but it can also add boobs and hips. You can build and make it dramatic.” It’s no surprise, then, that the corset expert has become a go-to among the Canadian drag community, and is consistently the choice for Brooke Lynn Hytes whenever she steps on the main stage as a Canada’s Drag Race co-host.
DiNoble fell in love with the art of corsetry when she was a high school student in the ’80s, studying art history, but more taken with the costumes worn by the subjects of the work. It was the 1939 photo “Mainbocher Corset,” from photographer Horst P. Horst that really sparked her interest, and DiNoble began researching corsetry obsessively. Her fascination led her to study costume design at Sheridan College in Toronto and eventually start Starkers Corsetry in 1992. It was around that time she started working with drag artists as well. “Back then, it was a little more pared-down,” she recalls. “Now, it’s just off the charts: very fashion, very avant-garde.”
Fast-forward to RuPaul’s Drag Race coming to Canada in 2020 with its own northern franchise. A fan of the original show, DiNoble tuned in—and while watching the show’s first season during the pandemic, DiNoble got a call from Hytes’s stylist. “They were doing a photoshoot and wanted to pull a look,” she says. The designer whipped up a custom look in a few days’ time. Unfortunately, the photoshoot was canceled because of COVID, but the experience helped in introducing Hytes, as well as other queens, to DiNoble’s work. From there, a relationship with season one Canada’s Drag Race winner, Priyanka, formed, and DiNoble was tasked to create a look for the queen as she passed off her crown to the new winner during the season two finale.
The duo worked together over Zoom to create one of the most beautiful dresses that has ever walked a Drag Race stage. “She wanted something that really highlighted her heritage,” DiNoble says of the Indian-inspired, ruby red gown completely covered in embellishments. It was the first time DiNoble saw her work on television. Of course, these days, hardly an episode of Canada’s Drag Race airs without her designs getting featured. “It’s wonderful to have that moment with my clients where they feel beautiful,” she says. “This is their alter ego, this is who they really are.”
Brad Callahan
Brad Callahan’s clothes are not for everyone, but they are for attention seekers. The designer’s pieces are bright and take up space—featuring stuffed spikes that protrude from the shoulders, capes covered in voluminous ruffles, or feathers that move with a mind of their own. His wide array of inspirations—insects, architecture, punk bands—seamlessly come together in each of his pieces. It’s no wonder the designer has been tapped by Lady Gaga, Lizzo, and Azealia Banks to dress them on various occasions. But before Callahan reached the mainstream, he started out in Brooklyn, dressing friends taking part in the performance art scene. When those drag queens started to make it big, they continued calling on Callahan for designs, until one day, the person on the other end of the phone call was Miley Cyrus. Callahan designed the looks for all 30 drag queens in the singer’s 2015 VMAs performance—a networking experience in addition to a grand showcase of his work.
At this point, Callahan has seen so many of his designs on TV—on pop stars as well as drag queens like Kylie Sonique Love, Aja, and Salina EsTitties—he’s used to it. But the response still gets him excited. “I love the fan reproductions and the drawings, and how much it permeates culture,” he says. “You never know what’s going to be a hit until the fans decide.”
Callahan has had some dresses that didn’t go over well with the judges and fans of Drag Race. There was the “Beast Couture” runway Kandy Muse wore on season 13—a latex green bodysuit featuring an attached blow-up body double—or EsTitties’s “Everybody Say Glove” runway from last season, which judge Ross Matthews read on the main stage. “The looks are often really controversial,” Callahan says. “They either love it or hate it. There’s not really a middle ground, which I guess is a good thing.”
One look that was universally appreciated, however, was a neon green, feather-covered creation of Callahan’s, featured in the Oscar-winning film, Everything Everywhere All At Once on Stephanie Hsu’s Jobu Tupaki. The film’s costume designer, Shirley Kurata, came across the look in Callahan’s show room. “She said she wanted to use the dress for this weird independent film,” Callahan recalls. “I said, ‘That sounds cool to me.’ I had no idea what it was going to end up becoming, but I’d have to say it was definitely a highlight of last year for me.”
Alexey Golubev
Growing up as a creative kid in Russia in the ’90s, Alexey Golubev had to search to find a culture and space with which he felt a connection. He couldn’t turn on MTV or go on the Internet—but he did have an old VHS tape filled with American music videos. “My favorite part was at the end, when there were about ten Madonna music videos in a row,” Golubev tells W over email. “I thought each one was a completely different woman. I was amazed by her ability to transform.” When he wasn’t watching that VHS, Golubev could be found drawing and exploring his interest in the arts. It wasn’t until he met his now-partner, drag performer Lorina Rey, that he was finally able to realize his dreams. “From the moment I met Lorina Rey, she has been my main muse and inspiration,” he says.
The two moved to Moscow together, where Golubev planned to pursue fashion, but the prospects were minimal. Eventually, he and Rey took matters into their own hands. “We decided to immerse ourselves in creativity and organize photoshoots for our own pleasure,” he says. Golubev started creating clothes for Rey while also styling looks using pieces from other designers. “I was able to fully study the fashion industry from the inside, without any special education.”
Golubev insists his works are born out of spontaneity and his current life situations. After seeing Pierpaolo Piccioli’s all-pink fall 2022 show for Valentino, he had an “aesthetic orgasm,” and started using the color excessively. In general, though, it’s all about the process, which he calls “an amazing journey,” albeit an exhausting one. It’s worth it, though, when he sees the finished product on Rey. “Lorina can be more feminine than any female model,” he adds, “More brutal than any guy with no makeup.”
There have been a few instances when Golubev himself has stepped into the role of a drag queen, specifically during drag parties he and Rey hosted back in Moscow. He even considered performing for a moment, but realized it wasn’t for him. Recently, though, he did return to the art form to model in a set of images alongside Rey, a process he found restorative. “In all her interviews, Lorina says drag is like therapy, and after that photoshoot, I can confirm it,” he says. “If it seems that the world around is collapsing and everything is gray, just put on drag makeup and dress in something big and bright and you will feel better.”
Marco Marco
When Marco Morante set up shop on Hollywood and Highland in Rick Owens’s old studio, many didn’t understand his art and what he was trying to sell. “People would come into the shop and look at what I was making and think of it as a novelty or something that wasn’t real,” he tells W. “That was eating me alive, because it felt so real to me.” Those who did understand his vision, however, were the drag queens who lived and worked nearby. Many of them didn’t have the money to commission pieces from Morante, but he worked with them anyway.
At the time, Morante had some television experience, working on American Idol and other popular shows. So when RuPaul was considering creating a reality show of his own, it made sense for him to cross the street from his production office to Morante’s shop and ask for some advice. “He knocked on my window and asked me some questions about a new idea for a show,” Morante recalls. “I thought it was amazing, obviously.”
Morante joined the team, and for seven years worked on the set of Drag Race, helping out wherever he was needed. “I was sort of a consultant as well as a procurer of things,” he says. “Whenever there was a challenge where the queens had to rummage through dumpsters to find gems, it was me that was filling the dumpsters with the gems.”
Lately, Morante is known more as a designer than a procurer of goods. His work on the HBO show We’re Here has won him an Emmy, while his history with queens and his embrace of extreme designs has kept him a go-to among the drag community. Like many drag designers these days, Morante doesn’t limit himself to a specific clientele, and has worked with Camila Cabello, Iggy Azalea, and Jennifer Lopez, among others. Over the years, he has seen drag’s entrance into the mainstream, and he’s glad it’s finally getting the recognition it deserves, as drag has been inspiring the straight world for years.
“In my opinion, it’s always been drag,” he says. “It’s just now you’re seeing where the roots are from. Those people deserve to be accredited for the way they change paradigms and push concepts.”
