I am:

Natrasha (Jamie Hutton). I’m a drag queen that is heavily inspired by art. Dynamic textures, fun fashion. I like to be a visual art form brought to life a little bit. I like to be a walking, talking, actual illusion. I think I've been doing drag for ten years now in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland.

My fashion sense has been shaped by:

A lot of things have shaped my fashion sense and drag image. I like to be considered quite eclectic. I think it changes look to look, but a lot of the times, obviously I look to pop culture, I look to fashion, and those things that inspire me as visual art is sort of like the biggest driver for me in terms of what I do.

I love Renaissance paintings. I was heavily impacted by the Catholic Church growing up. So some of the imagery really resonates in a lot of what I do. Artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga that incorporate that visual is also something that I look to in terms of like how that reflects, like costuming and stage presence.

I've also looked to runway shows and designers like Alexander McQueen and Thierry Mugler, who are heavily inspiring in terms of what the complexities of an outfit can look like.

There are often unexpected sources of inspiration in terms of what materialises my look. Sometimes you look at something as simple as a texture or a shape and be like, ‘oh, I want to incorporate that somehow’.

My relationship with fashion is:

Fashion is incredibly important to my drag persona, because a huge part of what I do is visual. I like to sketch, create, and make the ideation – top to tail – every time that I do a look.

References. Ideation and conceptualisation from me from start to finish. I describe my relationship with fashion as an art form. It's always heavily influenced my interest in drag and the queer and the unusual. Being a child who's been heavily inspired by art, the fashion world and designers like Thierry Mugler, obviously things a little bit more kitsch, like America's Next Top Model, really shaped who I was growing up.

I'm putting all of that fantasy and creativity into what I've done in drag. When people are looking at me and my drag, I like to tell them a different story every time, whether or not that's through a mood, a texture, or something very literal, like a suit of armour and you're like an old knight from the medieval times, or I'm covered in spikes, so don't touch me!

I'm not the most versed dancer. I love to perform and to give a show, but I think the thing that communicates most strongly to the audience from what I do are my ideas and how I present myself visually.

Putting together an outfit / inspiration:

I view drag as an art form. I design and construct a lot of what I do. I work collaboratively with designers. Everything that I put on my body, I've had a creative hand in.

So whether or not that's sketching from start to finish, creating fabric, textiles, rhinestones, everything, hand sewing things myself, or working with some of the world's most incredible designers like Ian Bernhard, Isabell Schulz, MistyCouture, just to name a few names. I work very, very in depth with them in terms of bringing my ideas to life.

It’s incredibly important for me to have ownership over the details of my style, because it's a story that I'm telling the audience. It's the things that I like to do in drag. I view it as a very creative and expressive art form, and by having that involvement in the process, it makes me feel like I'm communicating how I'm feeling and what I want to show the audience.

Drag is a very constraining hobby. There's always a budget, availability, time limitations. I think obviously having done it for 10 years, I've lived in a world where I've been making things out of paper and $20 to my name for the week, and I'm still showing up to the clubs and getting creative with it.

And then there's been times as well where I've saved my pennies and put together really intricate and complex looks, where you've invested in a billion rhinestones and the rest of it. So I've been very fortunate to see myself grow and be able to produce things to the full vision and level that I aspire to.

And I think that I'm always growing in that space. So those budget limitations, availability and resource limitations are always there, but you kind of work around it and try and get crafty and work with what you've got available.

I certainly can't speak for other people, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm incredibly impressed by everybody's mahi and seeing what everybody else's vision and creativity looks like.

I don't think audiences are quite aware of everything that goes into drag. They just they look at it for the spectacle and I think that's such a wonderful thing. If they knew what was going on behind the curtain, would it be as magical? I probably don't think it would be. So it's kind of nice that they can just have an initial reaction to it.

Cultural shift:

I've witnessed quite a lot of evolution in drag and the fashion in Aotearoa.

I think having done it for 10 years, it's maybe not as long as the time is as it may seem to some, but from my time in the scene, I've seen people itching to get a club gig, to seeing maybe hundreds of young people creating themselves and expressing themselves in very diverse and eclectic ways.

And that's happened in such a short span of time. I often see public perceptions around sourcing garments and their changes to experiences around fashion as a very cultural shift. I think things come in and out of style all the time and how people perceive certain things changes as well, and one of those things is how drag is perceived by the public.

At the moment there's quite a political and cultural back swing towards how acceptable drag is. People like to view it as something a bit more lewd or controversial, or something that's politically charged at the moment. So even all of this work and all of this ideation on fashion and art is really put to the back end because people are so perturbed by what we're doing in the scene.

Obviously having only done it for ten years, I've not seen the full scope. That's been something that's always been historically true for drag, and obviously the pioneers and the people in those scenes are probably very familiar with this feeling. But it's definitely very new to me in the space to see a little bit more of that backlash.

Drag has given me:

When I’m not in drag fashion is still very important to me, but perhaps a lot less. I think it's sort of easier to fall into things that are a little bit more comfortable because so much of what I do outside of drag as well in my career and professional life is creative. So sometimes it's just nice to kind of have a bit of a reprieve and throw on a T-shirt and just feel a bit more casual.

One of the things I would like to say just about myself and drag in general, is drag has been an incredibly transformative and confidence building thing for me over the last decade. I think art and the queer community uplifts us in spaces that we didn't think we could be a part of, like the stage or art scene, expressing ourselves creatively and freely without prejudice or pushback. Having a safe space to do that has been incredibly healing.

It's been incredibly helpful in terms of my growth as a young man. Obviously, seeing myself over the last decade, I can be incredibly proud of the growth and the maturing that I've done in this space, and I attribute that all to how I've gotten to express myself and the people that have inspired me along the way.

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.