“More leather cycles through here in a week than most people will see in ten lifetimes,” says Thom Glowski as he looks around the workshop in the basement of the home he and his husband share in south city. Home to his business, LDD Leather Works, the workshop is where the self-taught leather maker creates…
Fashion
Strike a Pose: St. Louis has a storied ball scene — and its stars are ready to strut their stuff at Pride
It was 2001 when Mechee Harper took her nineteen-year-old friend Meko Lee Burr to Chicago for his first ball. “We ended up taking over a KFC as our dressing room,” Harper recalls. “And the employees were like, ‘Well, alright!’” The underground, largely black and Latinx LGBTQ ball culture has mostly existed out of mainstream awareness…
Better Together: How Alicia Markstone and Janessa Highland saved each other — and rose to the top
When Janessa Highland became show director at Martha’s Vineyard in Springfield, Missouri, in 2011, she knew she was following in big footsteps. That included those of Alicia Markstone, the 2002 Miss Gay USofA at Large, who had gone from small-town Missouri to Florida to be the show director at the famed Suncoast Resort Hotel. But…
Aurora Schmidt’s Calling: Just-Right Tailoring for Queer, Trans, and Nonbinary Folx
It’s hard to get a suit to fit just so. But if the person wearing the suit happens to have been born in a body that includes broad hips, narrow shoulders or breasts, then the question of tailoring brings a whole new set of problems. Can the tailor handle the customer’s request without overt bigotry…
“Queer Kids Run This Town”
The sentiment, expressed in graffiti, was straightforward, cheeky, and just a little angry: “Queer Kids Run This Town,” scrawled across the front of a building in Toronto. “I found that super inspiring,” says Jared Rourke, who came across a photo of it online. “Damn straight we do!” he says. “The people I know in St.…