I am:

I’ve been a drag queen for about 15 years, a full time drag queen for the last five years and I love drag. It’s the best job in the world. I think of it as an act of service to people that I can go into a room and make people happy and give them a wonderful moment of joy, and a time to escape from the day-to-day grind of their lives.

I'm lucky enough to do this full time and I do that by co-owning Caluzzi Cabaret on K Road, which has been there for 29 years. And I also co-own a company called Drag Queen Bingo, and we do bingo events all around New Zealand, taking drag to small town, rural New Zealand.

And then I do a variety of other things TV shows and emceeing events and any corporate things. And yes, I just have the most amazing job, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Fashion is very important to my trade because it, I would probably just look like a man in makeup.

My fashion sense has been shaped by:

My style has been influenced by a couple of major things. The first one was Priscilla the Musical and the amazing costumes.

Then five to 10 years into my drag journey, I discovered the 1960s televised movie musicals like Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly!

Those amazing vintage shapes were so beautiful and that really inspired me. Because of that I went down the road of Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and style of the 60s, 70s, and the amazing patterns and colours that they would use.

My personal style has a more vintage aesthetic with ostrich feather trim and rhinestones.

My relationship with fashion is:

For me, fashion and costuming add so much to the character because it really gives a visual cue as to who your character is. I've always aspired to be more of a vintage kind of aesthetic and heavily inspired by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, the Ziegfeld Follies and all those old-fashioned showgirl sort of pieces.

Putting together an outfit/inspiration:

I have a saying, which is ‘you don't need to know how to sew as a drag queen if you've got a credit card’. I don’t know how to sew, but I'm quite good at spending my money. I wish I could make a costume but I think that to sew, you have to be a very technical person and have a lot of patience, and I don't as a person, I love to rush through things and get it done quickly.

I've got an eye for detail, but I haven't got the patience to do that. However, I do love putting rhinestones on things and hot glue gunning. I've got some wonderful friends who are brilliant at sewing and so I love to collaborate with them.

I'll find an old vintage drawing of a showgirl. Or it could be someone from the musical My Fair Lady and I’ll send that to a designer friend and say, ‘hey, I really like this and I really like it in this colour’. And then they generally draw up a concept from there, and then I will add things in to embellish it more or take things away, or just tweak it together, and then it's up to the designer to put it all together. And generally, their vision is wonderful and I'm super happy.

I'm trying to focus on more of the quality. Creating something really special and beautiful and something that I can use for decades to come.

I'm currently renovating my house, and I've got a new drag room for hanging all my costumes.

Drag evolution:

When I started drag 15 years ago, it doesn't seem that long in the scheme of things, yet it feels like an eternity in terms of technology development. When I started that, there just weren't really places to get drag. I think there maybe a couple of websites and there were one or two designers in New Zealand we could go to.

With the rise of RuPaul's Drag Race and how mainstream drag has become, it's so easy to get dragged now. And I think that that has seen in New Zealand a real an increase in the diversity of fashion in drag New Zealand. Whereas back in when I first started, it was the high drag with sequin dresses.

Now you'll see drag performers not just in sequin dresses, but in really amazing creations that sometimes are used on the World of WearableArt stage. There is more variety.

I got a beautiful pale blue vintage showgirl outfit from Pashion Couture, who's my designer I use often in Melbourne, and I remember putting it on for the first time and just feeling amazing.

I remember the other girls saying how beautiful they thought it was and how amazing I looked in it and it made me feel like the vintage showgirl. And I felt expensive just by being expensive. I felt beautiful. And I think that goes such a long way in, in creating a persona character, because you are a drag performer, you are a character that you've created. But looking on the outside, how you feel on the inside, it's such a wonderful experience and I think really helps you as a performer too.

Fashion can really elevate you as a performer, and that's why costuming is so important.

When I’m not in drag:

I'm actually rather boring. In general, I wear very plain clothes. I have a slight aesthetic game for 1940s vintage fabric and more natural fibres because of that.

But I don't really dress up ever when I'm not in drag. I get to go to some lovely events sometimes, and I will wear things that fit the theme of the event, but most of the time I just enjoy being comfortable and simple.

Portrait by Denise Baynham, 2025.

Audio engineering by Finn Hopley.
Video by Rochelle Ivanson.

Last published January 2026.

This exhibition was created for the New Zealand Fashion Museum for Pride 2026 with support from Britomart Group, Foundation North and The Rule Foundation.