During the 2021 second season of Canada’s Drag Race, Kimora Amour answered the “Ugly as Sin” runway prompt by depicting the historical horrors of slavery rather than treating ugliness as a comic or purely aesthetic concept. Designed by Baird and his close friend Anastarzia Anaquway, the costume presented Amour as an enslaved woman in bondage who ultimately broke her chains and moved toward freedom. The staging was unusually grave for the franchise: the judges did not interrupt the presentation with jokes or comedic commentary, and brief fades to black marked both her entrance and exit, creating a stark memorial tone. The performance became one of the season’s most emotionally intense fashion moments, but Baird later said that the psychological weight of presenting the slavery concept remained with her during the following episode. After a weak performance in the “Roast of Brooke Lynn Hytes,” she entered a bizarre lip-sync against Gia Metric, spending much of the number hovering and stalking around her opponent like an “annoying bird.” Baird later connected her apparent emotional disengagement and poor performance to the lingering intensity of the previous week’s runway, showing how a politically charged costume can continue affecting a performer well beyond the runway itself.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 2020s
Kimora Amour’s 2021 Sinner’s Ball Runway Turned Drag Spectacle into a Slavery Reckoning
Kimora Amour (Justin Baird) and Anastarzia Anaquway (Jermaine Aranha) / 2020s
During the 2021 second season of Canada’s Drag Race, Kimora Amour answered the “Ugly as Sin” runway prompt by depicting the historical horrors of slavery rather than treating ugliness as a comic or purely aesthetic concept. Designed by Baird and his close friend Anastarzia Anaquway, the costume presented Amour as an enslaved woman in bondage who ultimately broke her chains and moved toward freedom. The staging was unusually grave for the franchise: the judges did not interrupt the presentation with jokes or comedic commentary, and brief fades to black marked both her entrance and exit, creating a stark memorial tone. The performance became one of the season’s most emotionally intense fashion moments, but Baird later said that the psychological weight of presenting the slavery concept remained with her during the following episode. After a weak performance in the “Roast of Brooke Lynn Hytes,” she entered a bizarre lip-sync against Gia Metric, spending much of the number hovering and stalking around her opponent like an “annoying bird.” Baird later connected her apparent emotional disengagement and poor performance to the lingering intensity of the previous week’s runway, showing how a politically charged costume can continue affecting a performer well beyond the runway itself.
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