Drag Race Winner Symone is FASHION’s Summer Cover Star
Drag Celebrity Symone can’t cease smiling. She’s smiling once we discuss her profitable season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s smiling once we talk about drag as a type of activism. She’s even smiling when she experiences tech troubles. And it’s not simply any smile; it’s a uncommon smile that feels utterly real. It’s radiant, infectious and just a bit goofy, and it takes up her whole face. And with the world at her bedazzled fingertips, Symone actually does have quite a bit to smile about.
Throughout her time on Drag Race, the self-proclaimed “Ebony Enchantress” shortly turned a favorite amongst followers and judges for her bubbly persona, quirky chortle and avant-garde type. Since profitable the crown in 2021, she has develop into a bona fide vogue icon, sitting within the entrance row at varied vogue weeks, starring in Moschino’s Fall 2021 marketing campaign and gracing the Met Gala purple carpet.
However I’m not greeted by an elaborate hairdo or a designer robe on this explicit wet afternoon. As a substitute, Symone is out of drag, fresh-faced and sporting a graphic Tina Turner T-shirt. Behind her, I get a glimpse into her L.A. life: leftover takeout on a espresso desk; laundry on its solution to the washer; piles of books and magazines ready to be learn. It’s a magical mess that you just would possibly look forward to finding within the house of 5 drag queens, a few whom make repeated appearances within the background all through our video chat. “We’re very a lot a household,” says Symone of her drag mother and sisters, who name themselves The Home of Avalon. “I’ve recognized them since my sophomore 12 months of school, so I’ve just about grown up with them.”
Earlier than assembly her drag household, Symone was a makeup-obsessed teen from Conway, Ark., who would rush house from college to check out magnificence tutorials. “I had two hours earlier than my mother and father returned from work, so I’d do my make-up, after which as quickly as I heard the storage door open, I’d wipe all of it off,” she says. Symone’s secret pastime — impressed by early seasons of Drag Race and her mother’s love of dressing up — shortly advanced into an integral a part of her id. “I needed to discover a solution to categorical myself as a result of being a young person was tough,” she says, referring to her expertise with bullying in center college. With some additional money coming in from a part-time job, Symone was capable of quietly construct a make-up assortment from Goal and began to put up her appears on Instagram.
Regardless of Arkansas’s conservative popularity, Symone grew up in a extra open-minded a part of the state, together with her household absolutely embracing her queer id as soon as she instructed them. “In fact, it was nonetheless a problem, and I nonetheless went by means of being [derogatorily] known as ‘homosexual’ and all of that, but it surely was nothing in comparison with if I had lived 30 minutes away,” she explains. “I additionally suppose that due to the web and Drag Race turning into extra mainstream, after I acquired to highschool, my sexuality and hobbies weren’t such a giant deal. Even when folks weren’t on board, they had been not less than open to it.”
It was considered one of Symone’s buddies who inspired her to have her first-ever drag expertise on the college’s promenade. “It hadn’t occurred to me to do it till she stated it,” admits Symone. And due to the mother of considered one of her classmates (“she was the one store proprietor who would let me attempt on a gown”), Symone was capable of decide a fairly little pink quantity to put on and even acquired the help of her principal. “At first, he didn’t acknowledge me, however when he did, he instructed me that I seemed nice and that if anybody stated something to me, I ought to let him know.”
Symone’s first drag efficiency was at a neighborhood bar’s newbie evening just a few months later. “I used to be so nervous that I used to be shaking,” she recollects. “However as quickly because the hostess launched me, it was like a change. I nonetheless can’t actually clarify it. I keep in mind the highlight hitting me after which it was over.”
However Symone’s drag profession was simply starting. Throughout her time on the College of Arkansas at Little Rock, she met Grant Vanderbilt, a Home of Avalon resident, at a drag competitors. In truth, it was Vanderbilt who inspired her to not put on physique padding, which Symone has now develop into recognized for. “I didn’t comprehend it was attainable to be a drag queen with out padding,” she says. “Then I attempted it, and I felt so free, so I saved doing it,” she laughs. Quickly, she spent each weekend and summer season with The Home of Avalon in Little Rock and finally turned a everlasting member of the drag household in 2019, when she moved into their L.A. complicated. It was there that Symone determined to use to be on Drag Race. “I didn’t suppose I used to be worthy sufficient to be on the present, however everybody in the home was actually screaming at me to ship in a tape, so I did.”
And the remainder is historical past. When Symone gained a number of challenges and created quite a few viral vogue moments, together with a white gown adorned with bullet holes as a tribute to the Black Lives Matter protests, it was clear that she had come to not solely slay but in addition be unapologetically Black and rejoice her tradition.
For Symone, drag is greater than dressing up; it’s activism. “By its very definition, drag goes towards society,” she says. “Society fears what it can not management, and you can not management a drag queen.” However, paradoxically, drag has given Symone a way of management over her personal life. In an particularly poignant Drag Race episode, Symone revealed that as Reggie (her identify outdoors of drag), she felt stress to be excellent after her brother was arrested. “Symone might do something she needed — she might get drunk and be loud and have enjoyable,” she explains after I deliver up this second from the present. “Reggie needed to defend his household. He couldn’t make errors as a result of he had an actual life. So after I found drag, it gave me the liberty to not be that particular person.”
Because the years have handed, the traces between Reggie and Symone have more and more blurred. “Most queens say it will get tougher to steadiness the 2 personas, however I believe it’s gotten simpler,” reveals Symone. “At first, they had been two separate entities in my head, however this previous 12 months has helped me pour Symone’s charisma, uniqueness, nerve and expertise again into Reggie.”
This new confidence in her private life has led to extra self-assuredness in her skilled one. A 30-second scroll on Symone’s Instagram account demonstrates simply how fearless she actually is, particularly in relation to vogue: a neon-green tulle ball robe by Christian Siriano; a Mona Lisa crop prime by Jean Paul Gaultier; an all-leather jumpsuit styled by Zendaya’s fairy godfather, Legislation Roach. Then there are all of the journal covers, purple carpets and entrance row seats at international vogue weeks. “Drag queens are vogue’s new muses,” says Symone of the business’s present curiosity in her and her sisters. She explains that “drag queens are at all times on the forefront of tradition,” and contemplating the large success of Drag Race — the present is now in its 14th season and has impressed a big depend of spinoffs, together with Canada’s Drag Race — she’s not exaggerating. Contestants on the present develop into celebrities in a single day, and for Symone, this has led to her pursuing appearing, particularly in Bros, the primary main studio movie to characteristic an all-LGBTQIA2S+ forged taking part in all-LGBTQIA2S+ roles. “Appearing is just like drag in that you just get to play with how folks see you,” she shares. “However I wouldn’t say Symone is a personality; she’s extra simply who I’m.”
And who she is is unapologetically herself. She is fast to smile — even faster to chortle — and brings sunshine wherever she goes. “Drag saved my life,” she reveals. “I imply it. I’d not bodily be right here proper now with out it. And I believe that’s what retains all of us queens going. We all know what it’s wish to actually battle to be ourselves. All I would like for my drag is for different folks to get pleasure from it and expertise it. Making folks comfortable makes me comfortable.” Mission achieved.
Pictures by GREG SWALES. Artistic course and styling by GEORGE ANTONOPOULOS. Hair by FITCH LUNAR FOR OPUS BEAUTY/HIDDEN CROWN. Make-up by RYLIE HOLDEN (RUBBER). Digital tech: MEREDITH MUNN. Manufacturing: ALEXEY GALETSKIY FOR AGPNYC. Lighting: YOLANDA LEANEY. Style assistant: LENNON GABRIEL. Manufacturing assistant: SASHA MILOSTNOVA FOR AGPNYC.
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