Ever since the mid-2010’s, mainstream popular culture has witnessed a steady increase in the visibility of cultural diversity, including a stronger presence of sexual minorities. LGBTQ+ and queer culture has now firmly established its presence in Western media. This presents an attractive new opportunity for marketers in the fashion and beauty industries in particular – not only by establishing LGBTQ+ as a target market (see Nölke, 2018) but also by examining the active production of LGBTQ+ professionals in shaping marketing communications (Ciszek and Pounders, 2020; Frankel and Ha, 2020).

This development is in no small part due to the rapid rise in popularity of one particular art form traditionally connected to the LGBTQ+ community and culture – drag. Drag has, in recent years, advanced far beyond LGBTQ+ audiences and subcultures, with performers becoming celebrities to vast international audiences, driven by reality TV shows such as RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR) and the wide reach enabled by social media platforms. Yet, the entry of drag into mainstream cultural consciousness has been largely unaccounted for in both sociological and marketing research (McCormack and Wignall, 2022).

As an art form, drag entails a number of practices, rituals, competencies and even vocabulary that both emerge from and are embedded in its culture. These material and cultural cues are increasingly being used as signifiers by brands. This becomes visible through partnerships of beauty brands collaborating and including drag performers’ names on new products (such as Kim Chi Sugarpill Cosmetics) or splashing their drag persona on marketing campaigns (Shangela fuelling ‘fierceness’ at McDonald’s).

This chapter explores how drag performers employ artisanal practices to shape brand meanings. Artisanship is a term often used by anthropologists to describe skilled craftsmanship. Traditional artisans own both the material aspects of their work and possess knowledge in craft production (Dickie and Frank, 1996). Moreover, they make decisions autonomously, engage actively in the production process and take pride in the quality of their work. In doing so, they imbue the artefact that results from their work with a certain aura, a notion of the extraordinary that may create a relationship with a certain audience of followers (Spencer, 1973; Joy and Belk, 2020).