Sasha Velour’s ‘NightGowns’ Drops a Universe of Drag into the Palm of Your Hand

Quibi—the latest in a string of splashy streaming service launches—promises a lot: it wants to give you hours of new content every single day from a who’s who of A-list stars all delivered in bite-size episodes/chapters/chunks. That’s a bold promise, and I’m not even mentioning the more niche promise that one show, NightGowns, makes: to drop a universe of queer expression into the palm of your hand. Just judging by the first chapter of this docu-series available at Quibi’s launch, NightGowns succeeds.

There’s so much drag on TV, whether it be on your phone or your laptop or TV, or on VH1, Netflix, WOW Presents+ (and soon TLC and HBO). That’s not even taking into account the hours of content uploaded to YouTube and Instagram every single day, a flood of content only deepened by the shut-in orders issued across America. There’s no shortage of drag content online during the corona crisis, as nationally-known queens and local performers put their ingenuity to work by staging digital drag shows.

Show creator and Drag Race winner Sasha Velour, of course, had no idea that this would be the landscape within which NightGowns would debut. Velour can do many things, but predict the future is not one of them (although I’m now picturing Sasha in full drag as the mutant prognosticator/X-Men nemesis/queer icon Destiny and I am living). But nevertheless, here NightGowns is, ready to stream and bring 8 minutes of glorious drag excellence into your life via your mobile device.

Just like the avant-garde Sasha Velour, NightGowns was always going to stand out in a crowded field of digital drag content. But NightGowns is such a singular vision that it pushes all the Instagram live videos and delightfully snarky YouTube shows six feet away. The show is gorgeously shot and painstakingly paced with the level of care you expect from the queen that gave us the most thought-out runway looks (who else could serve medieval tapestry realness in a unicorn category?).

The excellence on display throughout NightGowns crystallizes in Velour’s opening number, a magical rendition of Stevie Knicks’ haunting and propulsive “Edge of Seventeen.” Draped in liquid gold and beseiged by an offstage wind machine, Velour stomps, swirls, smirks and celebrates every single cyllable—er, syllable. Sasha’s Quibi debut completely confirms that her magic translates to an iPhone screen (held horizontally, let’s be honest here), aided by a bit of editing sleight of hand that actually enhances the IRL trickery she pulls off with just a projector, white screen, and tenacity.

It’s too early to tell if Quibi can continually deliver on all of its promises, but NightGowns delivers on one: it does drop a universe of drag into the palm of your hand.

Stream NightGowns on Quibi