As a teenager, Miss Fame had supermodel ambitions.
"Miss Fame is basically the mother that I never had."
“CAN YOU WET THIS FOR ME?” Miss Fame asks the young woman next to her, handing her a pink Beauty Blender makeup sponge. It’s early February in Brooklyn, where the drag queen is about to pose for the first in a series of portraits captured by the fashion photographer, Paola Kudacki. After she’d chatted with each member of the team that day—from the manicurist to the wig master to the fashion stylist—she carefully took her perch in front of the mirror, where she’d go from Kurtis Dam-Mikkelsen to the contoured, tucked, and painted Miss Fame. At various points during the process, most of us would find ourselves watching her in the mirror, transfixed, before moving along. But one loyal subject remained totally cast under Fame’s magical spell: Kudacki’s wide-eyed young niece, a solitary student for a masterclass, watching the drag artist spend hours meticulously building her signature look from a bare face, absorbing advice on everything from application techniques to mixing loose powders. And now, she had officially gone from audience member to faithful assistant, with a sisterly nod from the woman in the mirror.
“If you’ve taken just one thing from what I’ve said here, I’ve done my job,” Fame says to her loyal subject as she wraps up her final look for the day. If it comes off like she’s a natural at this, it’s because she is: She has over half a million subscribers on You-Tube, where her tutorials easily rack up millions of views. In fact, she’s been doing this kind of work for years—before, her viral internet presence, or her worldwide appeal as a drag sensation, Miss Fame was a teacher. She moved to New York in 2011 and got a job with MAC Cosmetics at Bloomingdale's. Originally, one of her dreams was to become a male model—but nothing quite took off the way she wanted.
