Queer fashion takes center stage at dapperQ’s New York Fashion Week extravaganza

More than 70 LGBTQ models and eight designers took over the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday night for dapperQ’s ninth annual queer fashion show, “Presents Nine,” coinciding with the start of New York Fashion Week.

Hundreds of attendees crowded the perimeter of the runway, cheering, chanting — and sometimes screaming — as models strutted across the stage. The show featured clothing and accessories from veteran and first-time designers alike, including Mickey Freeman, Austin Alegria and Keith Kelly. They all showcased work that centered on fashion rooted in gender nonconformity.

While the event is not part of the official New York Fashion Week lineup, dapperQ, a digital magazine dedicated to covering queer fashion as a form of activism, intentionally makes its show just as big of a spectacle. The idea for the event came to founder Anita Dolce Vita more than a decade ago, when she started receiving invitations to NYFW shows.

“I would come back with very little content that would be relevant to our readers and our communities,” Dolce Vita told NBC News. “So, I thought to myself, why don’t we just do our own fashion show?” 

Buffy Sierra, the show’s emcee and dapperQ’s runway coordinator, said the show aims to serve as a way of “opening the door to fashion week.”

“Queerness is a political identity, first and foremost,” Sierra said. “At its baseline, it’s something that’s criminalized. It’s something that is targeted. And bringing ourselves on a stage is always going to be a political act.”