photos / Talon Reed Cooper @talonreedcooper
story / Mason Pippenger @mason.pip
starring@itsdarlenebtw
photo + lighting assist / Vaughan Larsen @photos.vaughan
style assist / Branden Marcus @brandenmarcus
location / Shot @ TRC in Hollywood
Things are not things anymore. Symbols are now only symbols for the things they used to stand for, the American Flag being one of them, especially for communities currently under attack by endless governmental barriers to their survival. But for queer artists and performers, these layered symbols are used as tools to question and inspire viewers to think deeper about the systems at play and how we are all part of a bigger being.
Or they don’t.
Sometimes they don’t have to mean anything at all. Sometimes the most radical thing a performer can do is simply be themselves.
In an era of ragebait and corecore, genuineness is hard to find. And when a discordant drag queen claimed that there were “no stars” on season 18 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the venomness felt real. While pull-quotes and meme moments are always on the tip of the tongue of so many television personalities, the overwhelmingness of curated characters is intoxicating.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused being memorable with being manufactured. Personality has become performance, and performance has become branding.
But every once in a while, somebody like Darlene pops up.
Darlene Mitchell.
She doesn’t arrive as a carefully engineered persona. She doesn’t seem interested in convincing you she’s a star.
She simply “acts” like herself—and somehow, that’s exactly what makes people want to love her.
In a battered trucker hat and sleeveless cut-off, her comfortability in casualness matches the ease in which she talks about landing a worldwide spotlight on the RuPaul’s Drag Race, but she didn’t always have this cool composure about drag.
“I USED TO BE SCARED OF DRAG SHOWS! WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO CHICAGO AND WENT TO EVENTS, I WOULD HOLD MY FRIEND’S HAND HOPING A QUEEN WOULDN’T NOTICE ME OR SINGLE ME OUT.”
But through many held hands, gender-swap college parties, and individual curiosity, Mitchell started doing her own makeup. In her bedroom, YouTube tutorial in the queue, and with enough practice, mastered her mug.
In the realm of drag, repping your home city or state becomes a part of your core identity as a performer. Mitchell’s perfect symmetrical smile may convince you she’s LA-bred, but her charmingness and Midwest-niceness makes it no surprise that her roots are as Indiana as they come.
“GROWING UP, I FELT LIKE THERE WAS THIS PART OF ME THAT KNEW I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO ELSEWHERE. NOT RUN AWAY OR ESCAPE, BUT LIVE AND EXPERIENCE MORE OF WHAT LIFE HAD TO OFFER.”
Leaving the fields of corn for the Chicago skyline gave Mitchell the first taste of the life she dreamed of.
“THERE’S STILL SO MUCH SHAME WRAPPED UP IN PLACES LIKE INDIANA ABOUT BEING QUEER, THERE WASN’T PEOPLE I COULD LOOK UP TO IN THAT SENSE. I KNEW I HAD TO FIND WHERE THAT PLACE WAS.”
Teaming up with photographer Talon Reed Cooper, a fellow Hoosier, reminds audiences how much talent is sprouting from the small towns in between the coasts, how crops who are tended to day in and day out can produce a harvest not even the farmer could expect. Mitchell says she never felt subdued by Indiana’s conservatism though. In fact, her environment nurtured a drive for more. A drive that eventually led her to Los Angeles, boyfriend in tow.
“I WORKED IN COSTUME AND TV, AND STUDIED COSMETOLOGY. SO RIGHT BEFORE DRAG RACE, I WAS WORKING AT A SALON. I GOT TO A SPOT IN MY LIFE WHERE I LOVED WHERE I WAS AT, I WAS SETTLED. THEN I GOT THE CALL.”
Even though now Mitchell has been in the game for years, she’s had her own eras. Formerly known in drag as Trash, she recalls a time in her life that was while well-intentioned, still finding her footing in the circuit of queer nightlife.
“I DID THE THING GIRLS DO. I PARTIED, DID DRAG ON THE STREETS, FOR YEARS. THEN BECAME SOBER AND HAD TO REASSESS HOW DRAG FIT INTO MY LIFE. I HAD TO DEVOLVE IN A SORT OF SENSE.”
To reach this level of awareness, though I’m sure many tactics work, Mitchell chose one of sobriety. Who was once known as Trash, the staple slightly too-drunk drag queen you’d still cheer for because it was a Thursday at your local bar. Somewhere in Mitchell, she saw beyond the dollars and performance to take a step back and recalibrate her life, even beyond drag. What does a life of queer love and acceptance really look like? How does one still chase their dreams and remain true to the self that inspired those dreams in the first place?
For Darlene, the alignment of sobriety, self-awareness, and luck became her own recipe for stardom.
“I TRIED OUT FOR DRAG RACE FOUR TIMES. I SAID I’D NEVER DO IT AGAIN. AFTER THAT, I TOOK SOME TIME, RESTRUCTURED MY LIFE. I SAID, LET ME TAKE A STEP BACK. I STARTED A NEW CHAPTER IN MY LIFE. BUT AFTER SOME TIME, MY FRIENDS ENCOURAGED ME TO AUDITION ONE MORE TIME AND I SAID, OKAY IF THIS IS THE LAST TIME, LET’S REALLY GO FOR IT.”
It worked.
The show aired leaving viewers to voice their myriad of opinions and critiques of looks, personalities, and performances all from our living rooms. Despite some not grasping her “country cunty camp,” Darlene kept judges, and viewers, laughing and under her spell with sunburnt trailer trash looks to avante garde couture. But there had to be something more that earned a 3rd place ranking on one of the biggest competition shows on television.
“I THINK MOST PEOPLE IDENTIFY WITH VULNERABILITY AND AUTHENTICITY. I THINK THAT CAN BE THE HARDEST THING TO COMMIT TO. YOU GET TO ESCAPE A LOT OF CRITICISM WHEN YOU STRIVE FOR PERFECTION. THERE’S SO MUCH MORE TO LEARN WHEN YOU TURN THAT IDEA UPSIDE DOWN, WHEN YOU SAY ‘TO HELL WITH THAT.’”
On a platform as big as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the new prerequisites must be thick skin and quick twitter fingers because the online drama and mud-slinging from fans and even fellow Ru-girls while the season airs can be deafening. But Mitchell is able to separate haters from their hate surprisingly with grace and recognition.
“ANYTIME YOU CREATE A SMALL COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE, EVEN QUEER PEOPLE OR FREE-THINKERS, OF PEOPLE DOING THE SAME CRAFT, YOU’RE ALWAYS GONNA FIND RULES, RULES THAT MAKE EVERYONE COMFORTABLE IN WHAT THEY’RE DOING. I MEAN, I’LL PLAY BY THOSE RULES, BUT I WANT TO POKE THE BEAR. THAT’S WHERE DARLENE LIVES.”
Darlene Mitchell doesn’t need to be your kind of star.
In an era obsessed with branding, reinvention, and image control, her appeal comes from something rarer: a willingness to be fully herself.
“SOMETHING I CAN FEEL, SOMETHING I’M PROUD OF, IS I THINK PEOPLE ARE REMEMBERING THE JOY OF DRAG. THIS THING WE DO ISN’T PERFECTION.”
Whether in drag or out of it, her charisma isn’t manufactured—it’s rooted in joy, honesty, and an instinctive understanding of the people she’s speaking to.
But even still, a queen is still a queen. “She doesn’t need to be yours.”
Darlene Mitchell is proof that the most magnetic stars aren’t always the most polished or the loudest in the room—they’re the ones who let people see the person beneath the performance, behind the makeup, beckoning real realness.
Red Leather / Vintage La Nouvelle Renaissance
