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Velour: The Drag Magazine [Collector's Edition]
At 300 pages, entirely ad-free, The Drag Magazine [Collector's Edition] is as much an art book as a magazine. Designed by Velour in her signature style, it features illustrations, collages, fashion editorials, poems, interviews, and essays by over 75 queer artists and drag performers from around the world. Since it's inception in 2013, the magazine has been dedicated to showcasing the work of drag queens and drag kings, queer, trans, AFAB, and non-binary drag artists from all backgrounds. This new collector's edition, which compiles all 3 issues of Velour for the first time, showcases House of Velour's dedication to celebrating every drag artist who dares to create work that pushes boundaries in both queer and mainstream culture. Now larger and in hardback form, the compiled issues of Velour are a comprehensive study of the complex and varied nature and vision of drag today. Hardcover 9.25" x 11" 300 pages, Color, Offset Printed Published November 2018
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301 pages, Hardcover
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 9, 2020
Velour: The Drag Magazine collects the first three volumes of the zine created and edited by Sasha Velour and Johnny Velour. It is an astonishing work of design featuring essays, comics, art, and photo essays that capture the definitions, nuances, and concepts of drag, realness, and sisterhood. It’s a masterpiece of queerness that celebrates queer history, drag queens and kings, trans, AFAB, and nonbinary drag artists, and the rebellion that makes drag what it is. A fantastic book with some superb writing, theory, thought, and art.
July 17, 2021
Great collection of drag art. Drag is more than just performance on the stage, and I found some great artists. My favorite excerpts follow:
In someways, nature represents the ultimate “real”, so it’s exciting to see both photography and drag interacting with nature, improving it, distorting it.
Defining Drag: A Vymifesto
Defining Drag - a vymifesto
drag is the embracing of fakery, the cunning mimicry of binaries that reveals the life, the deception that reveals a truth. The contradictory honesty of performing as whatever self you can invent.
queerness is danger to those who build themselves on binaries, and queerness is hope to those who can’t. queerness is the edge of shadow, the wisp of smoke, the fractured mirror!
And drag is the art of queerness.
you might be tempted to say that drug is the theater of transformation, but slow down there, puppy! Don’t runoff and get your leg snapped by the trap of the binary, the alluring Simplicity of "male to female "and “female to male.” The concept of transformation is nestled deep at the heart of drag, yet it is not necessary to become "Someone you are not "or become "the gender you are not "to do drag.
To insist that drug demands a gender transformation is to defy the very concept of drag, the very clear Ness of drag, to break it spine and force it into a nearly labeled shoebox. To give into the same fear of the gender “other” that can inspire us to explore drag, to sink into transphobia and leave our art form to drown. So forget all that and wriggle free towards the truth!
When it comes to drag, trans and non-binary people – especially trans women of color – know the truth of presentation and the deceptive danger of “transformation” all too well. Being perceived by the world – and yes, even the queer world – as “feeling” at their perceived gender identity at any given time can get them harassed, fired, evicted, abused, jailed, and murdered, their killers walking free. Drag performers of all identities to take on some of the same danger themselves in their performance, yet many discarded with their wigs and lashes or binders and Packers at the end of the night. To deny this is to deny the very first beneath the art form itself, to ignore the complex indiscrimination of the forces of transphobia and homophobia coursing through our culture.
All this proves that even clearer spaces aren’t safe from the tyranny of heterosexism, The demand for clear boundaries between masculine and feminine, the authority of the male voice for defining identity. And that’s why the dominance of the cis male gay voice in pop culture is happily welcomed by straight audiences, all too readily gobbling up a single definition Of drag and declaring it the whole. It’s a fundamental paradox of the concept of drag!
Truly, the most powerful transformation of drag is that of a performer demanding and receiving acceptance of their personal reality from their audience. The room is word becomes transformed, not necessarily the performer… They create a dreamworld, a world where transgression of the gender and sexual binary simply exist without apology, and invites the audience to share in it.
Veronica Bleaus
a truly terrible drag performance is one that doesn’t connect to the audience in any way. it’s boring. That’s not what I’m after. but the kind where your makeup looks like shit, your wig falls off, your outfit falls apart, and your heel snaps, but you still nail a good performance because you are present on stage… That’s my kind of terrible.
In someways, nature represents the ultimate “real”, so it’s exciting to see both photography and drag interacting with nature, improving it, distorting it.
Defining Drag: A Vymifesto
Defining Drag - a vymifesto
drag is the embracing of fakery, the cunning mimicry of binaries that reveals the life, the deception that reveals a truth. The contradictory honesty of performing as whatever self you can invent.
queerness is danger to those who build themselves on binaries, and queerness is hope to those who can’t. queerness is the edge of shadow, the wisp of smoke, the fractured mirror!
And drag is the art of queerness.
you might be tempted to say that drug is the theater of transformation, but slow down there, puppy! Don’t runoff and get your leg snapped by the trap of the binary, the alluring Simplicity of "male to female "and “female to male.” The concept of transformation is nestled deep at the heart of drag, yet it is not necessary to become "Someone you are not "or become "the gender you are not "to do drag.
To insist that drug demands a gender transformation is to defy the very concept of drag, the very clear Ness of drag, to break it spine and force it into a nearly labeled shoebox. To give into the same fear of the gender “other” that can inspire us to explore drag, to sink into transphobia and leave our art form to drown. So forget all that and wriggle free towards the truth!
When it comes to drag, trans and non-binary people – especially trans women of color – know the truth of presentation and the deceptive danger of “transformation” all too well. Being perceived by the world – and yes, even the queer world – as “feeling” at their perceived gender identity at any given time can get them harassed, fired, evicted, abused, jailed, and murdered, their killers walking free. Drag performers of all identities to take on some of the same danger themselves in their performance, yet many discarded with their wigs and lashes or binders and Packers at the end of the night. To deny this is to deny the very first beneath the art form itself, to ignore the complex indiscrimination of the forces of transphobia and homophobia coursing through our culture.
All this proves that even clearer spaces aren’t safe from the tyranny of heterosexism, The demand for clear boundaries between masculine and feminine, the authority of the male voice for defining identity. And that’s why the dominance of the cis male gay voice in pop culture is happily welcomed by straight audiences, all too readily gobbling up a single definition Of drag and declaring it the whole. It’s a fundamental paradox of the concept of drag!
Truly, the most powerful transformation of drag is that of a performer demanding and receiving acceptance of their personal reality from their audience. The room is word becomes transformed, not necessarily the performer… They create a dreamworld, a world where transgression of the gender and sexual binary simply exist without apology, and invites the audience to share in it.
Veronica Bleaus
a truly terrible drag performance is one that doesn’t connect to the audience in any way. it’s boring. That’s not what I’m after. but the kind where your makeup looks like shit, your wig falls off, your outfit falls apart, and your heel snaps, but you still nail a good performance because you are present on stage… That’s my kind of terrible.
September 9, 2020
A wonderful celebration of drag! I learned a lot with all the interviews and articles! Gorgeous photographs, art, illustrations! Comics were so fun to read! All in all, a great piece of art and a must-have for every drag fan!
February 12, 2021
Such a beautiful collection of artwork, giving the reader a glimpse of the rich drag & queer scene in the US -past, present and future. The handwritten introductions by Sasha Velour on each article make it even more special. Truly a gem of a book, made with love for its community.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews