The cast of characters who walked the runway at Gypsy Sport was as excitingly varied as it gets, with everyone from a pair of blonde twins in chain-mail dresses to the disco singer Shamir in a ripped and tailored black-and-white look. But perhaps the most unexpected model of the evening (hell, of all Fashion Week) was Desmond, a 10-year-old LGBTQIA activist and self-professed “drag kid” who loves Diana Ross and practices what he calls “kinderdrag.” Rocking an oversize black blazer with Elizabethan flourishes, Desmond had as much confidence as a seasoned supermodel, his cheeks rouged and hair slicked across his forehead.
Desmond was born in 2007 in New York during Pride Week and says he came out of the closet when he was born. He first developed a penchant for wearing dresses at 6, when he dressed as Elsa from Frozen for Halloween. He has since performed in a music video for RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Jinkx Monsoon and founded the first drag house exclusively for youth, called the Haus of Amazing. But he had never walked in a NYFW show until tonight at Gypsy Sport, another check off the bucket list for this little gay prodigy. “I am dying! Literally dying right now!” he wrote on his Instagram before the show. “My first time walking in @nyfw”—but definitely not his last.
