- Hi, I'm Ada Vox.
I am a drag vocalist and this is how I work it.
I'm gonna take you through a typical day
of my beauty and wellness routine.
My vocal range on a regular day is an A2 to a D6.
I am the voice of drag known widely
as the best live drag singer in the world.
I'm usually recognized from being a finalist
on "American Idol" and "Queen of the Universe".
Good morning, we are in New Orleans today.
It is about nine-ish a.m. and let's get the day started.
Today we have sound check and a show tonight.
Oh, thank you so much.
My phone's here.
Time to get fueled for the day
before we start to become beautiful.
The look that I'm gonna be doing today
is very standard performance look for me,
just hyper glam, very beauty.
If I'm getting ready for a day of performance,
I will always make sure that I am awake
and ready to get in makeup,
at least four hours before performance time.
If it's an evening performance, one,
I gotta get my voice going.
Whooo yeahhh.
Two, I gotta get hydrated.
Three, I gotta get beautiful.
Okay, y'all, now we are here.
We have a towel wrapped around this
and we are ready to go ahead and get started for the day.
We have our teeth brushed.
Now what we're gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead
and get ready to shave my face.
I forgot shaving cream.
So what I'm going to do is actually use a bit
of the conditioner from the shower and just gonna go ahead
and use that since it's better than just shaving completely
on straight to the skin without any lubricant.
[soft music]
Beautiful.
Drag is one of those things.
There's so many steps to get to becoming a thing.
You have to trust the process.
I know it looks crazy right now.
It's gonna look crazier in a little bit,
but just go go along with the ride.
Next we are going to take my trusty powder, Cody Air Spun.
This is in shade, translucent, extra coverage.
We are gonna take a big old powder puff
that I had hiding in there, and we are gonna put powder all
over this face to set all
of the cranes that we have set down.
Oh my goodness, don't breathe.
We're gonna dip right into cut
by Ms. Bafiance Michaels right here.
This would usually be used for a contour,
but I like this color for a good natural glam eye.
With this brown,
we're gonna begin to shape and cut our crease.
Of course, in order to further feminize
and accentuate features of my face,
we are going to over dramatize certain things
and that includes creating extra high space
on the way to beauty.
When I am traveling and I wake up at the hotel to get ready
for my day of a show, wherever it may be,
the first thing that I do is get myself water.
As a vocalist, hydration is the number one
priority because if you're vocal chords
are not properly hydrated and lubricated,
then you're gonna be
at increased risk for vocal damage,
full access to all the tonal qualities
that you wish to produce.
Hydration is the key to everything.
I discovered drag and the LGBT community
and all of those things, much later in life.
I saw my first drag queen
after I was invited to take part in my local pride
in San Antonio, Texas, which is my hometown.
I was invited after my appearance
on "American Idol" season 12,
where I was on as just little old me.
And after watching some of them on stage, I said,
why are they all lip syncing?
Why is nobody singing?
What is happening?
So after that I just said, you know what?
I think I know what I need to do.
And that's how drag got started for me.
I started doing drag because having been
in the industry as a professional vocalist
for a good few years before I ever created Ada Vox,
I was always told things as, you're not attractive enough.
You're not pretty enough, you're not marketable enough.
So in my working towards wanting to advance my career
into the mainstream industry, I said,
how can I fool people
or make the industry think that I'm good enough?
I created Ada as a type
of diva persona that was always within me.
I have been a singer first and foremost
and this is why I refer to myself a little more
as a drag artist rather than a drag queen,
which I think is a more
of a specific term in the drag umbrella,
which covers so many beautiful colors of the drag rainbow.
Now we're just gonna go ahead
and take a good fluffy brush and we are gonna dust stuff
all of this excess powder from under our eyes.
Whoop, little flick.
I think we got it.
Next up, we're gonna go ahead
and begin our contouring and shaping of our face right here.
Pad, pad, pad, swirl, swirl, swirl,
whatever works for you.
There's a lot of forehead to shade y'all.
The next step we're gonna do, we're gonna go ahead
and get this Shany Cosmetics brush right here.
So a little dip, boop, right into chisel.
You don't need much.
And we're gonna head into actually chiseling those cheeks.
So now we're gonna get into blush.
We're gonna take that same first contour brush that we used,
big fluffy angled works for me,
and this palette
from Shany Cosmetics right here,
one of my favorite blush palettes.
We're gonna do a little dip, dip, dip probably
into these two colors here.
A very liberal amount of blush because I'm gonna place this,
it's gonna look crazy, probably like very Cindy Lauper,
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, like crazy amount of blush first.
And that's just how I work.
We're gonna take this to everywhere
that we applied contour.
The magic of the fluffy brush right here.
Next ,to finish our contouring process,
we're gonna contour our nose.
We're gonna try to make that thing skinny and snish.
Use your fingers to help blend out those edges.
We're gonna take a little bit of powder, again,
lose powder on this sponge, and we are going to actually
put a small amount under each eye.
We wanna be.
Wait.
Wait, wake up, wake up, put a little
powder under your eyes.
Now we're almost done.
The thing with drag is once you draw on your eyebrows
you can't do a whole bunch with them.
I have half of my eyebrow only
because it makes my job a lot easier.
For instance, when my eyebrows grow out,
they're about this big and this long,
just right above my eyes
and that just doesn't work for what I go for for drag.
This is concentration.
If I don't concentrate, I will look like I'm constipated.
We have got one eyebrow on
and now the real challenge is getting to match it
to the other one.
I'm sure plenty of you can relate.
So let's just hope for the best.
When it comes to preparing a look,
for me, I oftentimes get inspired by people that I see,
other queens that I follow, other people that I admire.
I gravitate towards very, very beautiful things.
For me, I like a sparkle because it feels expensive,
without always being expensive.
Sequin will be your best friend.
One of my keys to fashion
and looking glamour is always a good dramatic sleeve honey.
One thing that I really love is that there
is this really great collaborative
networking that goes on through social media
for drag artists, entertainers and whatnot.
There's groups where people literally have
created spaces just to buy, sell, trade
and create drag for one another.
Everything from hair to jewelry
to makeup products and costumes.
And I find a lot of inspiration
and a lot of my favorite garments have been
from those collaborative efforts and from artists
and creators who are in those spaces.
As a singer, there is a whole lot
of attention drawn to my lips.
So this particular step is very important in making sure
that that we look together,
'cause everyone is staring at that mouth,
especially as a singing queen.
'Cause everyone wants to know
if your lip syncing, so they're paying attention honey.
A lip like this, which is a wonderful thick
and matte formula.
The matte formula is what works
for me because of the way that I overdraw my lip.
You don't want any shimmer to be placed there
if you're doing one solid color,
because it will only accentuate the line
of your natural lip, which you're trying to avoid,
of course, creating the illusion of larger lips.
So I have this lash right here.
We're gonna pop this on our eyes,
at the lash line at the front,
off the lash line towards the back.
So this is the finished makeup look.
So when it comes to hair, I've got a lot of my own.
So I like to pop on updos or put on a ponytail
over this and just call it a beautiful easy day.
But sometimes I like to wear full cap actual drag wigs.
When I travel for a gig,
I am known to travel very, very light.
I can make everything fit in a backpack and a duffle bag.
She's a minimalist queen.
In my travel bags,
I always have a small package that carries all of my makeup
which usually fits just in my backpack
and in the duffle bag I'll have a pair of heels,
two outfits usually a hairpiece,
some flowers to put in my hair.
I love a flower in my hair
and my undergarments got a good corset on just in case.
And aside from that, I just take what I need.
I am very blessed to be one
of the luckier queens who doesn't wear a bunch of padding
or 16 pairs of panty hose like some of these queens do.
I just wear one or two pairs of spanks.
Of course it if I'm feeling frisky,
and let my natural body do the rest
of the work.
When I'm getting ready,
especially on days where
it's a little more difficult mentally, physically,
we're tired, we're going through it.
I like to sing positive affirmations
to myself while I'm getting ready.
I like to get my little powder brush going and say,
you so pretty as you are,
while I'm getting ready,
putting on my lipstick saying, yes,
you better be you beautiful,
oh yeah.
Right before I go on stage,
while I'm sipping the last bits of water,
I like to have a moment
of silence where I get to collect myself and make sure
that I'm in the right mind space to get out there,
turn myself on on that entertainer switch
and be ready to give a good show.
When I'm performing, I love to dig out the diva classics.
Anything like Patty LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight,
all the way up to the new girls
like say, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera.
Duly, but even.
Why the heck not every now and again?
As long as I can feel
like a beautiful diva giving you some diva attitude,
then I'm gonna be able to sing you a lovely song.
Whooo.
My favorite part about performing is always
that I get to put myself
into everything that I do and hopefully touch other people
with my message and with my passion for what I'm doing.
My saying is always I do what I love
for the people that love what I do.
So if I can get other people to feel the love that I put
into it, that's what I love the most.
When I do my performances, it's kind of different,
every single thing that I do.
Sometimes I'll be thrown into shows where
I do one or two numbers to open up a big show
or to headline and be part of this fundraiser event.
Other times I do actual like mini concerts where
I have full live bands and I'm in a full theater
and do an hour and a half, two hour long show.
It just depends on what the occasion calls for.
Finally, back to the hotel room, after the gig y'all.
Now it's time to get out of all
of this foolery and become a clean
and rested queen.
Then, I jump in the shower,
wash off my face with my favorite shampoo conditioner,
Garnier Whole Blends Honey Treasures,
I believe is my favorite one that I use.
I like to use the shampoo because I feel
like it strips the most oils and residue off of my skin.
We're gonna take just a couple pumps of this.
[soft music]
That looks pretty good.
After a performance,
quite oftentimes I'm very, very depleted, energy wise,
physically, anyway that you can imagine.
I had brain surgery when I was a young child,
which has caused some long lasting sensory issues.
Some of those things
like sensitivity to light and sound,
lead to like triggering migraines,
triggering even muscle spasms
body aches and pains after every single performance.
So I'm often left feeling very drained,
but I can't stop because I love what I do so much
and I'm so passionate about sharing my song and my soul.
So once I am out
of the shower and ready to collapse into bed,
I always make sure to hydrate one last time.
I drink a good liter of water
before heading to sleep to make sure
that I wake up refreshed and ready to sing.
Still gonna finish our water.
Okay, Lord, it's now like 1:00 AM
or something and I'm real tired.
Thank you so much for spending the day with me.
Goodnight.
[soft music]