The Best Runway Looks From the Season Premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race

The seventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race debuted Monday night; did you gag on the eleganza? I was gagging until the cows came home and went back out again, as we were introduced to the latest queens to infiltrate our worlds with their inventive “couture” looks and mostly-lovable personas.

Because the show debuted smack amid fashion month, RuPaul introduced an appropriate Spring/Fall runway theme, and it was a savvy move: the first couple episodes are all about gleaning what each queen has to offer, and we got to see a pretty full spectrum of their personas as interpreted via fashion. (And, important to note: there were no offensive trans slurs, good riddance.) Because I fully subscribe to the concept that style should be fiercely personal and fashion is its most fun when it’s about putting on a persona or creating a fantasy—no matter who you are or what you do—style in New York City, the Bay Area and elsewhere would be nothing if not for drag queens. While Paris Fashion Week stomps and slinks its way across the runway, here are some of the best looks from the Ru-way.

Max

Max of Minneapolis (so “Frederick’s of Hollywood”) doesn’t seem to be an early fave online, but I think everyone is tripping: the way she puts together this “old Hollywood” thing she’s obsessed with is impeccable, but even more intriguing to me is the way she imbues it with a sense of futurism: for her Spring look on the runway, she looked like the robot from Metropolis mixed with Daisy from The Great Gatsby and I could not get enough of it. Not to mention her wild, slightly scary, probably controversial final judge’s look, which she verbally invoked “polio,” leaned on crutches, and wore 1930s lingerie beneath her tear-away geometric two-piece. Judge Michelle Visage said it reminded her of Helmut Newton photographing Nadja Auermann; there were also elements of Alexander McQueen’s A/W 1998 show.

But Max also showed versatility: her Fall look was stunning in an entirely different way, full on late-’80s modernist in brown with a goddamn hairflip. A drag queen in BROWN! GET INTO IT.

Miss Fame

Miss Fame is from New York City, in case you couldn’t tell from this Poison Ivy/alien crown club kid situation she walked in with. I’m getting shades of last season’s Vivacious (GAG, my fave), which makes sense, since Vi was and is a total style icon who embodied the best parts of New York City’s ball scene (ugh and her RUNWAY WALK). Miss Fame is younger than Vi but carries this tradition with aplomb, and I hope she doesn’t mind if I borrow some of her make-up tricks, cause those aqua-blue eyebrows are the most.

Her Fall runway look, though, also exhibited her versatility—she was a vision as a 1930s film star, complete with turkey-feather spectator hat and shoulderpads that could poke somebody’s eye out, which is perfect—all 1930s ladies of the silver screen need a weapon on hand, just in case. (The hat looks very stabbable, too.)