More than 70 LGBTQ models and eight designers took over the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday night for dapperQ’s ninth annual queer fashion show, "Presents Nine," coinciding with the start of New York Fashion Week.
Hundreds of attendees crowded the perimeter of the runway, cheering, chanting — and sometimes screaming — as models strutted across the stage. The show featured clothing and accessories from veteran and first-time designers alike, including Mickey Freeman, Austin Alegria and Keith Kelly. They all showcased work that centered on fashion rooted in gender nonconformity.
While the event is not part of the official New York Fashion Week lineup, dapperQ, a digital magazine dedicated to covering queer fashion as a form of activism, intentionally makes its show just as big of a spectacle. The idea for the event came to founder Anita Dolce Vita more than a decade ago, when she started receiving invitations to NYFW shows.
“I would come back with very little content that would be relevant to our readers and our communities,” Dolce Vita told NBC News. “So, I thought to myself, why don’t we just do our own fashion show?”
Buffy Sierra, the show's emcee and dapperQ's runway coordinator, said the show aims to serve as a way of "opening the door to fashion week."
“Queerness is a political identity, first and foremost,” Sierra said. “At its baseline, it’s something that’s criminalized. It’s something that is targeted. And bringing ourselves on a stage is always going to be a political act.”
Sierra opened the show with a drag performance set to “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan. In her opening remarks, she called for a “free Palestine,” the first of several references to the Israel-Hamas war during the event.
“dapperQ doesn’t shy away from the moment; it meets the moment,” she said afterward.
Sierra has seen many performance stages — her day job is working as a stage manager for New York City theater and, at night, she performs drag — but she says the dapperQ stage is unlike any other.
“It’s the only stage I’ve experienced as many trans people in one room,” she said.
That sentiment was palpable on the runway. The diversity of models and looks ranged from drag to genderless, with some flexing their muscles and others voguing or blowing kisses to the crowd.
Stefa Marin Alarcon, a model for designer Auston Bjorkman’s transmasculine collection who goes by the stage name STEFA, described the atmosphere as both “radical” and “wholesome.”
STEFA walked down the runway to the tune of “New York Groove” by Ace Frehley in a long-sleeve, loose-fitted jersey sprawled with the phrase “Trans I Am” and depictions of traditionally hypermasculine cars printed on their shirt and shorts.
It was their first time ever walking down a runway, which wasn’t unique for this show, which frequently features debut models.
“When I walked off, a couple people came up to me and said my walk was amazing,” they said. “I appreciated that so much.”
The roots of dapperQ
Dolce Vita started dapperQ in 2009 as a digital space dedicated to “ungendering fashion.”
Originally from New Mexico, Dolce Vita grew up reading fashion magazines, like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, but never saw herself represented on those glossy pages. When she found the queer fashion community in New York, she said it was “liberating.”
The first show she produced in 2014 was a sold-out collaboration with DJ and event producer Whitney Day.
“When Anita came in with her show, it just knocked everyone’s socks off,” Day said.
The event's success inspired Dolce Vita to search for a new space that could accommodate an even bigger fashion show. She searched for a venue that understood what set queer fashion apart from the mainstream.
“Brooklyn Museum just got it right away,” she said.
Lauren Zelaya, director of public programs at Brooklyn Museum, said the museum is proud of its partnership and that the event has become “the destination to witness and celebrate the creativity of queer and trans designers who shape trends and the broader culture.”
To close out the night, Dolce Vita herself walked down the runway to “Freedom” by Beyoncé while wearing a keffiyeh — the scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity — and raising her fist. She said before the show that the elevation of queer fashion is political because it “agitates the system” and teaches people that dressing outside the gender binary can be an act of protest.
"A lot of people do not realize how much of how they dress is not only a personal choice, but something that is already been kind of ingrained in them since they were born," she said. She hopes the show will serve as "an invitation" to all people "to actually come together and see this and celebrate this as a protest, and see this as a stand for our own autonomy.”
For more from NBC Out, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
