Strides of pride in fashion

As the Pride month inches to an end, these LGBTQIA+ trendsetters talk about taking the fashion world by storm with their inimitable, glamorous sartorial choices

Sushant Divgikr aka Rani KoHEnur, singer and drag queen

It was a journey of a lot of trial and error to reach where she is today in the world of fashion, but for drag queen Sushant Divgikr aka Rani KoHEnur, staying unapologetic allowed her personality to shine through her choice of clothes. She says, “As time goes by, you create your own style and comfort as you keep learning and understanding your body. In the end, it is your body so you can adorn it with whatever you want and nothing else really matters.” Being a trans woman and the queen of drag in India, “seeing actor Rekha in Khoon Bhari Maang was when I realised this was my calling”. Divgikr shares, “In my early years, when I saw Rekha in Khoon Bhari Maang, I just wanted to grow up and become that and I did become Jyoti from the movie in real life.” While she is of the opinion that being queer or transgender doesn’t mean that it equals to being fashionable naturally. The drag queen explains, “While fashion has been something that the LGBTQIA+ community has used to express ourselves because we have been oppressed with everything else. But I don’t think it is to do as much as being queer or transgender. There are also people from within the community who are absolutely boring when it comes to fashion and don’t like to dress up.” But she is happy the community got the platform to break the barriers and shackles of patriarchy via this expression. She further explains, “I think that is the beauty of expression and it can never be taken away from people, especially my community. I’m very happy about the fact that my community expresses through fashion and we will keep on doing it, we will be pioneers and in the forefront of fashion, whether you like it or you don’t like it.”

Suruj Pankaj Rajkhowa aka Glorious Luna, model and drag queen

Hailing from Dergaon in Assam, Suruj aka Luna is a queer drag queen and model, who got his first break after getting noticed by a Mumbai-based photographer in 2017. After doing theatre and with a knack for cross-dressing, led him to his first ever drag audition and later, his first ever drag show where he performed. Having walked for several designers at the recently concluded Lakmé Fashion Week, Rajkhowa shares how “fashion is the first and only language that the LGBTQIA+ community uses to express their queerness”. The drag queen says, “Fashion is the only open, accepting and democratic space where one can act however, they want, and it welcomes everyone. Growing up, queer people needed fashion to express themselves. It is funny how when a gay man studies fashion, people think it’s because he is good at it but it’s not. It is because that’s the first and only language that we use to express our queerness as we are not always allowed to say it and even if we do, people are deaf to the expression. So, we use fashion as a tool of expression.” From secretly reading fashion magazine to being featured on several, it has been a journey for Rajkhowa. He explains, “Growing up, I used to secretly read a lot of fashion magazines and imagine myself on their cover one day. But then, reality hit me and broke me since I couldn’t identify myself as either a boy or a girl to be featured in it. So, getting the chance to make it there definitely has to be my biggest achievement. I feel seen today”. His two cents are that “if you are queer and an outsider and don’t feel you are fitting in, fashion should be the first avenue to try because one will definitely find their space as there is space for everyone.”

Param Sahib, fashion designer and stylist

Known for his unique maximalist style and conversational art pieces, Param Sahib is a Delhi-based gender queer multidisciplinary artist. With his bold, unusual and colour-popping palette, he focuses on making clothes for people who believe in being in the limelight. But the journey to arrive here has been a long way. Sahib shares how his journey with fashion started during his college days where he used to stitch his own clothes on a small juki machine in his room. The designer shares, “Seeing that, my friends started giving me work and I felt like a brand since then! My early days of playing with Barbie dolls as a child and making clothes for them with scraps from nearby local tailor shops was something that conditioned me deeply towards fashion. It was tough to convince my family to pursue fashion as a career that never existed ten years back! But my love for clothes took over everything and today having created a brand synonymous with colors and everything wild has been my biggest achievement.” Sahib believes the fashion industry has come really ahead and has championed the existence of the LGBTQIA+ community. He explains, “From no talks and recognition a few years back to what is today, Indian fashion has emerged as a strong purchasing and consumer market for the queer community and it’s warming to see that!”

Anwesh Sahoo, fashion illustrator

After winning the title of Mr Gay India in 2016, there has been no looking back for the 27-year-old Anwesh Sahoo. The gay fashion illustrator is also a model, author and a public speaker. After coming out of the closet at the age of 16, he had a “rather complex journey of sorts”. Sahoo says, “Over time, I used art, design and technology to accomplish things in life.”

He shares how a lot of rejections, hardwork, resilience and disappointments got him where he is today, and how important it is to stay relevant in the fashion space. Sahoo shares, “I come from a family of businessmen, so we grew up in a very academically charged environment. After winning Mr Gay India, I started working as a fashion illustrator and a fashion model. It was insanely difficult for me because I was not able to understand the language that the people, I worked with spoke. All of this is an over-the-top representation of all the trauma I grew up with. I love fashion as that’s what I grew up consuming. While studying in NIFT, I spent countless hours in the library taking references from 1980s and 1990s’ fashion magazines and mixed all these references with what I grew up with in terms of art. Pattachitra and Odissi have had huge impact and left a great influence on me.”

Having been bullied during his childhood days, his only “refuge was reading fashion magazines and newspaper articles”. Sahoo shares, “I felt empowered consuming this knowledge and it made me feel the most comfortable. While fashion has always been very gender fluid with some of the greatest designers like John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, who used queer culture as a reference to create their fantastic range of work. But it is also a tight knit space and I am not sure if there is a space for equal opportunities. I do sense a bit of elitism that comes into the picture because of fashion’s very own nature. Having said that, there are changes and the LGBTQIA+ people being a part of the industry, goes on to talk about its inclusivity. In India, we are now open to queer models and fashion designers. Designers are featuring drag queens and trans models in their campaigns because it is inevitable that we do bring in a sense of visual interest.”

Shivam Bhardwaj, content creator

Coming from the small town of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, 24-year-old gay fashion content creator Shivam Bhardwaj shifted to Mumbai a year back to purse his content creation journey. “Coming from a conservative family and town, I had to make that move,” he shares. With limited clothes growing up, his love for fashion grew at an early age. “I used to restyle a lot of pieces again and again and that’s how my fashion knowledge started coming in and I thoroughly enjoyed all parts of it. When I was a child, I could experiment with my sense of style but after becoming a teenager, people couldn’t really understand it and questioned me for it so it was hard,” shares Bhardwaj.

After becoming viral as the man who slayed in a skirt inside a local train, Bhardwaj felt like he got his foot in the door then. He shares, “Even after everything, I never stopped experimenting and just like that one day, skirts became my love and I kept buying skirts and wearing them. Back then, no man was wearing skirts and I went full out in it. Although, a lot of people were really against me for it, I took that hate and kept going.”

However, he is of the belief that the LGBTQIA+ community don’t get credit for the change they are bringing in the world of fashion. He shares, “We are the ones who are changing the fashion game in and out but I feel like they don’t give us enough credit. Right now, all these straight men are playing a lot with gender-fluid styles and they are applauded for it but most of the times, people don’t know that we experimented and broke the glass ceiling first.”