Skip to content

Top Navigation

EW.com Entertainment Weekly EW.com Entertainment Weekly
  • TV
    • TV Reviews
    • TV Reunions
    • TV Recaps
    • Fall TV
    • Animated
    • Comedy
    • Crime
    • Drama
    • Mystery
    • Reality
    • Sci-fi
    • Thriller
  • Movies
    • Movie Reviews
    • Trailers
    • Film Festivals
    • Movie Reunions
    • Movie Previews
  • Music
    • Music Reviews
  • Books
    • Book Reviews
    • Author Interviews
  • Theater
    • Theater Reviews
  • Podcasts
  • Gaming
  • Events
    • Comic-Con
  • Celebrity
  • Awards
    • Oscars
    • Emmys
    • Golden Globes
    • SAG Awards
    • Grammys
    • Tony Awards
  • Streaming

Profile Menu

Your Profile

Account

  • Join Now
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletter
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Order Past Issues this link opens in a new tab
  • Logout
Login
Subscribe

Explore EW.com

EW.com Entertainment Weekly EW.com Entertainment Weekly
  • Explore

    Explore

    • Here are all 70 puppies competing in Puppy Bowl XVII

      Read More Next
    • The best books to keep you warm this January

      Read More Next
    • The Masked Dancer revealed: Every unmasked celebrity on season 1

      Read More Next
  • TV

    TV

    See all TV
    • TV Reviews
    • TV Reunions
    • TV Recaps
    • Fall TV
    • Animated
    • Comedy
    • Crime
    • Drama
    • Mystery
    • Reality
    • Sci-fi
    • Thriller
  • Movies

    Movies

    See all Movies
    • Movie Reviews
    • Trailers
    • Film Festivals
    • Movie Reunions
    • Movie Previews
  • Music

    Music

    See all Music
    • Music Reviews
  • Books

    Books

    See all Books
    • Book Reviews
    • Author Interviews
  • Theater

    Theater

    See all Theater
    • Theater Reviews
  • Podcasts
  • Gaming
  • Events

    Events

    See all Events
    • Comic-Con
  • Celebrity
  • Awards

    Awards

    See all Awards
    • Oscars
    • Emmys
    • Golden Globes
    • SAG Awards
    • Grammys
    • Tony Awards
  • Streaming

Profile Menu

Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
Your Profile

Account

  • Join Now
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletter
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Order Past Issues this link opens in a new tab
  • Logout
Login
Sweepstakes

Follow us

  1. Home Chevron Right
  2. Books Chevron Right
  3. RuPaul, Drag Race star Aja slay in spreads from Sasha Velour's hardcover art book

RuPaul, Drag Race star Aja slay in spreads from Sasha Velour's hardcover art book

By Joey Nolfi
November 06, 2018 at 12:00 PM EST
Skip gallery slides
Save FB Tweet

1 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

Va-va Velour

Credit: Daphne Chan

From conquering RuPaul's Drag Race to slaying New York Fashion Week alongside Christina Aguilera, drag superstar Sasha Velour has used her platform to fight for queer visbility and diversity. She's advancing the cause further with the first hardcover, collector's edition release of her indie art zine Velour: The Drag Magazine, which includes 296 pages of ad-free essays, collages, and personal editorials by 75 international queer artists and drag performers. In anticipation of the book's Nov. 15 launch date, Velour shares with EW six spreads from Velour: The Drag Magazine [Collector's Edition] in the gallery ahead, featuring poignant poetry, sickening fashions, and eye-popping photos featuring Velour's Drag Race sister Aja and RuPaul himself. The collection will be available for purchase at houseofvelour.com as well as select independent bookstores nationwide. Preorders are available now here.

1 of 7

Advertisement
Advertisement

2 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"Sasha Velour Wears Her Mother’s Dress"

Credit: Daphne Chan

Photographer Daphne Chan shot this René Magritte-inspired series that dramatizes Velour's grieving over the death of her mother, Jane, a community activist. As a kid, Velour says she was "fascinated" by Jane's clothes, which told "stories from when she was a young woman in the '80s in New York." Thus, she'd sneak into the room to try them on when Jane wasn't home. "They were the perfect fit," Velour continues, adding that in the months after Jane died, she turned to the clothes for comfort. "I got emotional in makeup, contemplating her legacy and its connection to my life today. We shot the photos in and around the former grounds of St. Vincent's hospital in the West Village... a city block that was once called 'ground zero' for AIDS in New York, a center of LGBTQ+ history in my city, and a space that calls out for some productive gay mourning."

2 of 7

3 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"House of Aja"

Credit: The Clout Club; Maddelynn Hatter

Ayo, sis! RuPaul's Drag Race star Aja's jumping from the stage to the page in Velour: The Drag Magazine in drag queen photographer Maddelynn Hatter's portrait-based, bejeweled chronicle of the original House of Aja featuring Dahlia Sin, Kandy Muse, Momo Shade, and Aja herself.

"I'll never forget the afternoon I did the interview with the whole house of Aja. Aja was packing to go on the road and putting on makeup at the same time, and we sat in a circle, spouting off dramatic statements and lowkey philosophical insights about Brooklyn, Drag Race, spirituality, and what community and family really mean," says Velour. "For these beautiful collages, I wanted to represent each member of the house as her own unique goddess. The lines of text are taken from our conversation.... I hope this piece captures their beloved reputation in our community!"

3 of 7

Advertisement
Continued on next slide.
Advertisement

4 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"Dear Reader"

Credit: Chad Sell

Artist Chad Sell crafted this portrait of Velour and her partner (and co-editor) Johnny to accompany a hand-written editor's letter for the second issue of The Drag Magazine.

"I've always loved [Chad's] interpretations of drag makeup, and I felt like such a diva commissioning one of myself! [I'm] particularly grateful for this immortalization of my original pre-Drag Race unibrow and my unending obsession with Nosferatu ears," Velour says of the piece. "Johnny, meanwhile, looks exactly the same (now with a beard), although we never got around to making him that brooch for real!"

4 of 7

Advertisement

5 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"My Comrade"

Credit: Linda Simpson

Velour re-scanned Linda Simpson's 1988 photo comic 60 Photos (featuring a young RuPaul) from the gay zine My Comrade for inclusion in The Drag Magazine, aiming to re-focus her radical depiction of a "utopian fantasy set in a fictional Institute of Homosexual Inclination" for a new audience.

"Linda Simpson's utopian 'Institute' is really just a metaphor for the refusal to succumb to the grief and agony of the late-'80s AIDS crisis," explains Velour, noting that gay artists from this period heavily influenced The Drag Magazine. "Using drag, self-publishing, and camp, she and her collaborators put forward a message of 'gay power, love, and camraderie' (as she says in her introduction) that still resonates today."

5 of 7

6 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"The Sisterhood of Drag" featuring Untitled Queen and Lucy Balls

Credit: Lucas Blair

Four pairs of drag siblings gathered for this editorial, transforming photos of each other (taken by Lucas Blair) using collage, embroidery, paint, and more in over-the-top "visual love-letters to each other's drag," per Velour's description.

"Sometimes a photo can't quite capture all the magic of drag, so you have to put that photo 'in drag', in a sense, embellishing it with a personal touch," she explains. "We called the portrait series 'In Each Other’s Eyes,' because it reminds me that so much of how drag 'looks' is about how it's perceived, and perhaps no one perceives us more accurately than our fellow drag performers. This is a playful attempt to capture that on the page!"

6 of 7

Advertisement
Advertisement
Continued on next slide.
Advertisement

7 of 7

Save FB Tweet
Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

"The Modern Spellbook for Queer Sisterhood"

Credit: April Malig/Untitled Queen

Velour admits she played matchmaker for this collaboration between cartoonist and printmaker April Malig and drag artist Untitled Queen, which offers magical tips from the Spectacularly Sad Surreptitious Spinster Snake Survival Spellbook including "sickening tips and tricks to turn all your onlookers to STONE,” “five short spells for surviving,” and a “spell for ensnaring a snake sister."

"They are the two most inter-disciplinary people I've ever met, so it's no surprise that their final collaboration involved photography, writing, cooking, glass-blowing, illustration, and risograph printing!" Velour says of the piece's creative partners. "And then we photographed them holding their self-produced zine, and they did their own nails! This is probably my favorite piece in the entire book."

7 of 7

Advertisement
Advertisement
Replay gallery

Share the Gallery

Pinterest Facebook

Up Next

  • By Joey Nolfi @joeynolfi

Share the Gallery

Pinterest Facebook
Trending Videos
Advertisement
Skip slide summaries

Everything in This Slideshow

Advertisement

View All

1 of 7 Va-va Velour
2 of 7 "Sasha Velour Wears Her Mother’s Dress"
3 of 7 "House of Aja"
4 of 7 "Dear Reader"
5 of 7 "My Comrade"
6 of 7 "The Sisterhood of Drag" featuring Untitled Queen and Lucy Balls
7 of 7 "The Modern Spellbook for Queer Sisterhood"

Share options

Pinterest Mail Email iphone Send Text Message
EW.com Entertainment Weekly

Magazines & More

Learn More

  • Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
  • Content Licensing this link opens in a new tab
  • Sitemap

Connect

Follow Us
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Other Meredith Sites

Other Meredith Sites

  • 4 Your Health this link opens in a new tab
  • Allrecipes this link opens in a new tab
  • All People Quilt this link opens in a new tab
  • Better Homes & Gardens this link opens in a new tab
  • Bizrate Insights this link opens in a new tab
  • Bizrate Surveys this link opens in a new tab
  • Cooking Light this link opens in a new tab
  • Daily Paws this link opens in a new tab
  • EatingWell this link opens in a new tab
  • Eat This, Not That this link opens in a new tab
  • Food & Wine this link opens in a new tab
  • Health this link opens in a new tab
  • Hello Giggles this link opens in a new tab
  • Instyle this link opens in a new tab
  • Martha Stewart this link opens in a new tab
  • Midwest Living this link opens in a new tab
  • More this link opens in a new tab
  • MyRecipes this link opens in a new tab
  • MyWedding this link opens in a new tab
  • My Food and Family this link opens in a new tab
  • MyLife this link opens in a new tab
  • Parenting this link opens in a new tab
  • Parents this link opens in a new tab
  • People this link opens in a new tab
  • People en EspaƱol this link opens in a new tab
  • Rachael Ray Magazine this link opens in a new tab
  • Real Simple this link opens in a new tab
  • Ser Padres this link opens in a new tab
  • Shape this link opens in a new tab
  • Siempre Mujer this link opens in a new tab
  • Southern Living this link opens in a new tab
  • SwearBy this link opens in a new tab
  • Travel & Leisure this link opens in a new tab
© Copyright 2021 Meredith Corporation. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. Entertainment Weekly may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Privacy Policythis link opens in a new tab Terms of Servicethis link opens in a new tab Ad Choicesthis link opens in a new tab California Do Not Sellthis link opens a modal window Web Accessibilitythis link opens in a new tab
© Copyright . All rights reserved. Printed from https://ew.com

View image

RuPaul, Drag Race star Aja slay in spreads from Sasha Velour's hardcover art book
this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines.