On November 21, during the launch of the new season of Canada's Drag Race, contestant  Perla reinterpreted the iconic finale dress from Alexander McQueen's Runway Show No. 13, featuring model Shalom Harlow and two robots.

By Ludmilla Intravaia

"I am serving graffiti wall street art." With these words, drag queen Perla introduced her spray-painted dress on the runway of Canada's Drag Race Episode 1, aired last November 21. The look honored a designer who, in her words, "pulled me into the fashion world" and "started it all for me": Alexander McQueen.

This spray-painted dress remains iconic because of its reference to the finale of the designer’s Spring/Summer 1999 fashion show No. 13, in London, in 1998. In this groundbreaking performance, two industrial car-painting robots spray-painted a white dress worn by model Shalom Harlow, who spun on a rotating platform. A well-known fashion tech staging, so poetic and breathtaking that it transcended this unique moment in the universal history of fashion.

"I want to showcase my love of fashion in this beautiful recreation of a famous dress”, said the contestant from the fifth season of the drag reality show, smilling : "But we decided to spray paint it with my name, because… branding." Adding another layer of reference to her outfit, Perla incorporated an homage to british designer Richard Quinn’s "fetish work with the latex cats” but giving it “a softer edge in a full lace catsuit/facekini".

This isn’t the first time Alexander McQueen’s cult runway moment has been reproduced by admirers. Singer Hailee Steinfeld gave a nod to the iconic scene, during the MTV Europe Music Awards, on November 4, 2018, in Bilbao (more details in this article from Le Boudoir Numérique). Finally, it’s worth noting that the same Canada's Drag Race runway featured another example of glam tech: the snake embellishment on queen Minhi Wang’s dress was 3D printed.

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