GAYLETTER

American Apparel has always been a big supporter of the LGBTQ community. They’ve produced towels in collaboration with Butt Magazine featuring big hairy bare chested bears, they made the “GAY O.K.” T-shirt, and now the brand is releasing a set of 3 T-shirts featuring queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race.

We reached out to Jonny Szymanski at American Apparel to find out more about the collaboration and how it all came about.

Why did you guys decide to do this line of T-shirts? We like to think of this collection as a continuation of the “Support Artists, Support Ethical Manufacturing” line that we produced with artist, Petra Collins, about a year ago. These queens are multitalented performance artists and we wanted to pay homage to them with a line of limited edition t-shirts.

Who is the brains behind this? I sparked the initial conversation with the powers that be and it didn’t take long for everyone to get on board with making this drag dream a reality. American Apparel is great about letting all employees contribute creative ideas.

Why Alaska, Courtney and Willam? I worked with Willam and Courtney ages ago for a drag makeover show that I hosted and co-produced called “Transfashionable..” Getting them involved with my work at American Apparel came naturally. The girls in the office and I are all HUGE fans of Alaska, so we had to have her as well. It surprisingly worked out that all three of them were in LA at the time we had set aside for the initial photo shoot.

Is this an international campaign or only in the us? Guys — We’re talking about WOMEN OF THE WORLD here!

What was the concept for their looks? Initially, I wanted them to give classic — simple-original-early 2000s — AA trade show girl realness. We captured that in some of the shots but when you fill a photo studio with tons of clothes and three drag queens, anything can happen…and it did!

Check out the video below to see the girls in action.