I am:

I’m a 39-year-old strange lady from Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. I have been doing drag now for about 15 years. I’m very humbled and grateful to be the current torchbearer of Caluzzi Cabaret on Karangahape Road. After my win on RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under season one, I’m very lucky to be able to tour all around the world, but nothing beats being on K Road, being at home.

My fashion sense has been shaped by:

I would say my style would be a cocktail of camp icons, kitsch weirdos, and cartoon characters. Drag queens like Divine, Lady Bunny and Miss Ribena, to name a few, really shaped me in my early years. Basically, now, if it's colourful, bold and slightly unhinged, I'm inspired.

New Zealand drag used to be pure DIY warrior energy. Now, as drag has become so mainstream, we have designers around the world whipping up fabulousness, access to better materials, and audiences who crave the fashion side of drag. It's pushed me to refine my own look while keeping the camp diva inside alive.

Once the lashes are on and the wig is glued in place, I've become the full fantasy. Fashion doesn't just change how I look, it changes how I move, how I connect and command the room. It's my superpower in sequins, so to speak.

RuPaul once looked directly at me and said, ‘Kita, when you're in drag, there's a glint in your eye’. And she's right. These aren't just clothes that I'm wearing, it's a freedom of expression. It's a release. It's liberation. It's finally knowing that being fun and fabulous is correct and where I'm supposed to be. I make people feel safe and comfortable when they see me feeling authentically fabulous.

My relationship with fashion is:

It's safe to say that fashion is absolutely everything, darling. It's my armour. It's my attitude. It's quite frankly, my permission slip to cause absolute chaos in high heels. Without fashion I'm just a naughty, tall man. Fashion and I are in a long term, high maintenance relationship. When people look at me I want them to see camp, colour, confidence and a queen who's not afraid to play with the old while trying something new.

Putting together an outfit/inspiration:

I do a mix of it all. I design a lot of my looks. I collaborate with some of the most amazing designers around the world. Shout out to Pashion Couture in Melbourne, Australia! I even sometimes steal inspiration like a glamorous magpie, but I always want my fingerprints on the final design, even if someone else has stitched the seams.
It's very important. Drag is such a personal thing to me and if I'm not living and breathing myself authentically, then what's the point? The biggest constraints would be budgets, time and living in a country where, frankly, rhinestones take longer to arrive than some of my grinder hook-ups take to leave after we're finished, darling.
A drag look is a labour of love. Hours of sewing, stoning, styling, hot gluing, spraying. Audiences, they don't really realise how much work goes into it all, but that's the magic of it. The aim of the game is to make it look fabulously effortless. We live in a world now where we can all connect through the internet, so it's exciting to be inspired by other creatures of the night and to pull from them and learn from them.

When I’m not in drag:

I still love fashion. Spending most of my life over 160 kilos I never really felt truly comfortable in men's clothing, but now that I'm half that weight and turning 40, I absolutely love to play with fashion outside of drag.
Nothing sets the tone more, I think, than getting dressed up in a flamboyant suit, or a chic look for a night out on the town.

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.