‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ season 16 champion Nymphia Wind turned plenty of heads at the Emmy Awards
RuPaul’s Drag Race star Nymphia Wind turned plenty of heads at Sunday’s 2024 Emmy Awards, even though no one could see her face!
The reigning Drag Race champion hit the red carpet at the Peacock Theater in a full florescent bodycon dress complete with facekini. The look included hand-drawn and glued-on features and two giant detachable “leaves.”
While Nymphia is the self-proclaimed “Banana Queen,” her references for this look were much more high fashion — and inspired by another famous reality TV star.
“The inspiration was from Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala look with Balenciaga, the all-black one,” Nymphia told PEOPLE exclusively on Monday, Sept. 16. “And also Gareth Pugh’s 2016 runway, where they did face cover-up with and then painted makeup on top of that face cover up.”
“For this version, I wanted to do like a bold color and bold structure and shape, and that was the main focus,” the drag artist added. “I thought it would be good to just cover up my identity because I found what Kim did at the Met interesting where she covered up her identity and was just left with a physical form.”
Wind designed the dress herself with the help of collaborator Shio Gan. The “leaves” were designed by BadBinch TongTong, a New York-based designer.
And just like on the reality competition, Nymphia found herself adding last-minute touches to her outfit right before showtime, sharing a clip of Shio furiously adding sequins to the dress in the car ride over.
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“I used the wrong glue that had needed more time to dry,” Nymphia said of the embellishments. “So I went back to the normal fast-drying e6000 [glue] while I was in the car, because some of the stones fell off. Shio, my partner in crime, who helps make me a lot of my outfits, was stoning it while we were on the car rushing into the venue.”
Upon arriving at the Peacock Theater, it was mask-on and leaves-up. Nymphia didn’t have makeup under the look — “a little break from drag,” as she put it. However, there were still challenges.
“It was very torturous, because [the mask] compressed my actual lashes. It felt like my lash was poking my eyeball. So it was very uncomfortable,” she said, admitting she had to partially remove the mask at points due to the irritation. The mask also made her very sweaty.
Nymphia admits she was star-struck by all the attendees, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
“He passed by and was like, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I love this!’ And I was like, ‘I’m Nymphia Wind!’ ”
” ‘Oh, we love you!’ ” Nymphia recalls the Modern Family actor responding. “It’s crazy to meet these people … a lot of them actually watch Drag Race.”
“Matt Bomer was like, ‘Congratulations!’ Matt Bomer does not come across as someone to me that watches Drag Race!” she added.
Nymphia will have plenty of time to cool off after the sweaty Emmys night; she’s planning a holiday to Antarctica with her mother. Then she’ll be guest-starring in Drag Race Vegas Live for a week in November.
It’s not the first time a Drag Race contestant has turned heads at the Emmys. During January’s ceremony honoring the 2022-2023 TV season, Nymphia costar Plain Jane delighted and terrified attendees dressed as a green goblin.