I remember back in the day when I stared doing drag, and then well into the 90's and early 2000's if you were a club queen or a pageant queen, and were serious about drag and in the know, you had a Coco Vega gown or more, and at least one wig created by the late great Chris March. I never had the latter, but did have two gowns by Coco, and they were often hand beaded and sequined gowns. I would swear the royal blue floor length I had weighed at least 20lbs!!! And Coco is still around, in Las Vegas now, and is still huge on the pageant circuit. But these days, if your a campy club queen and preforming, then one covets a Florence D' Lee original. And trust me, you have seen his work hunty. Bryce Turegon, also known as Florence D'Lee is a fun loving, dom top bear, ex- drag queen himself, and has worked as a designer for many of the queens from Drag Race and in New York City, not to mention an accomplished theatrical costume designer. This season's Tina Burner, had just about every look created by Florence, and a couple of Rose's as well, in addition to disqualified queen Sherry Pie from last season.
Florence had been involved with theatre from an early age.By high school he knew he had a flair for costume designing, and ultimately got his BFA in theatrical costume design, and shortly after moved to NYC. But left to not designing anything for shows, but more of a "sewing technician", he ended up walking away for a different career path. At that time he'd been moonlighting as a drag queen, and turned it into a full time job. Being a huge bear at 6'8" and built like a linebacker, he had no choice but too design his own costumes. It was then, a lot of plus size queens took notice to his finery, and started commissioning him for custom garments. Fast forward to years later and he left the preforming to run his own full time design company, creating for drag queens and nightlife scenesters.
Since then, he's been constantly booked with queens. I'm sure it's never a dull moment. Two of his most favorite creations were not of his muses but for the promo look and finale gown for Scarlett Envy on Drag Race.
The Sherry Pie disaster seemed to follow him, but died down quickly, now the LGBT has been a huge support of him and his work. When he had spoke passionately about designing some of Sherry's looks, thankfully people finally understood where he was coming from. I agreed with him, that the RPDR community can get vicious. He had asked that viewers didn't shred and tear down every aspect of Sherry on the show, because so much of what we see is coming from designers and artists, wig designers and jewelers. Most viewers don't realize it takes a village to get these bitches on the show. And with his comment of that, he is absolutely right. The queens don't bring their old everyday drag anymore, like the early days. This past season was so nice seeing so many creations on Tina and Rose'
Of course like many of us, Florence felt the crunch of the pandemic too, with queens not doing shows, clubs and productions shut down. Thank goodness for drag race and queens at least needing creations for the show, right? But the pandemic and summer throw curveballs at him... and he suffered back in June, when he was rushed to the hospital with Cauda Equine Syndrome. He suffered major damage to his spinal cord, causing numbness from the waist down confining him to a wheelchair, temporally. After that stint, he had to do rehabilitation on regaining his strength. It also put a major stress on him financially, but luckily with friends and queens, they set up a Go Fund Me, which outdid the goal they had set, since he needed medical equipment that would help him with his daily life, pay rent, house supplies, hospital bills, and work studio modifications. When he had got home, Tina Burner was getting ready to leave for the show's filming... and they still had to finish the 15 looks...no small feat, but between them both, they found every seamstress they knew, before she set off. While his work load is no where near back to normal yet...he has to even turn down business with his strength not back fully yet... is doing much better and feeling the love!
He says down the road he's hoping to show his own collection when and if fashion week ever returns, where he'd love to show the world a fully realized collection from the talented and creative force of Florence D' Lee.
