[enchanting music]
- Hello, my name is Charity Kase.
I'm a London-based creature creator.
And today, I'm going to be turning
into a fantastical, fabulous, disco fish.
The disco fish is going to entail blue skin,
scary, horrible bag eyes, and lots and lots of sparkles.
So, my first stage of preparation is going
to be tying back this mane
and having a little shave.
Charity Kase is a mythical being.
She's bubbly. She's fun.
And she's quite scary, as well, sometimes.
I've been doing drag for close to seven years now.
The first couple of years were more just experimenting
with makeup and costume.
It's lots of metalware, chains,
bows, ribbons, ruffles, and lots of crystals.
So now, I'm going to mix my foundation
in my gorgeous palette.
I grew up in the Northwest in Lancashire
in a really tiny, little village.
And I was literally the only gay in the village
for my whole childhood,
which was quite traumatizing in a lot of ways.
It's a really closed-minded, close-knit community
where people haven't seen much expression
from people like me.
So, I didn't fit in at all around there.
And I never let that stop me from expressing myself.
And I always saw fashion and looks
as a way of showing other people how I felt inside.
I knew that I didn't fit in any way,
so I wanted to not fit in even more
and be absolutely fabulous.
I'm just adding a highlight tone
with my white cream blend sticks.
I was really into Tim Burton, all of the characters
from "James and the Giant Peach",
and del Toro.
And I'm not really into anything that's based in reality
because I like to escape from the world that we live in.
Like, I love Tarantino, Poison Ivy, She-Ra,
Black Widow, you know,
strong women who don't take no for an answer.
So, I've just finished doing all my highlighting
in the middle of my face.
And now I'm using a darker blue
to just like go around the sides,
give it some more definition,
and do a little bit of contouring.
So when I went to college,
I studied full-time art and design.
It was a really amazing experience for me.
I found that I was into my textiles and my sewing.
I used the opportunity to try and learn as much
as I possibly could about that.
But halfway through the year,
I transferred colleges down to London.
Then, I got kind of sucked up into the nightlife scene.
And I dropped out of college and became a,
became a full-time scene kid, I guess, for awhile.
My college was, like, over an hour away on the train.
And I had to be there at like eight every morning
or something for sign-in.
And obviously, when you've gotta be there
at eight in the morning, you don't want
to be going out partying the night before.
And I did want to be out partying the night before.
So, my priorities weren't quite in order back then.
I was, like, hosting a few nights and stuff.
I would go out in just like a jock strap,
and some platform shoes, and a choker.
Like, that was my general look back then.
And I would think I was doing, like, club kid couture,
which I really wasn't at all.
I was just being a slut.
Not that being a slut is bad, of course.
So now, I'm going to go in with some more blue powder
and just build up this, this contour on the side of my face.
At this point, I was making a little bit of a name
for myself on the nightlife scene here.
But one night on a night out, a party, someone spiked me
and took advantage of me,
which was really hard to deal with
and to accept as an 18-year-old.
But, that had been my experience.
A few months down the line,
I was very, very sick
and I ended up being diagnosed HIV positive
from this experience, which was really quite traumatizing,
and hard to accept, and to understand.
I felt like I didn't really know what HIV was at this point.
I felt quite uneducated about it.
And drag became my escape form.
It became my therapy of sorts.
It was my way of expressing myself
without telling people how I felt in words.
If I felt, woke up one morning and I felt really sad,
I would paint tears all over my face
and I'd be a really sad, little doll that day.
Or if I was feeling angry,
I'd paint myself red and turn into a demon.
It was just a good way of me feeling and looking how I felt
without telling people that I felt really sad
or really angry.
But, it really did grow me as a person.
It taught me a lot about myself,
a lot about my self worth, and a lot about HIV.
And I don't think HIV is talked about enough.
I feel like I can use my platform to educate others
who feel how I felt six years ago when I got diagnosed.
I'm just adding more blue eyeshadow under my eyes
to deepen these sockets.
So, one of the first times I got into drag,
I dressed as a lizard creature.
And looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself,
not seeing any single part of me that reflected Harry,
it's that freedom of no one knows who I am,
no one knows what's underneath here.
And first of all,
I committed to doing a 100 days of drag challenge.
But, I got picked up by a few different news outlets
and magazines.
And eventually,
it just seemed like it was a wasted opportunity
to stop it at 100 days.
So, I continued on to doing 365 days,
which was a big commitment.
And that kind of exposed me to more of an online audience
and opened up my opportunities to the drag industry.
And, it also helped me in speed.
Like, I used to take three or four hours
to do a full-body look.
But now, I'm practiced and I'm fast.
So, my next stage is to paint all of this section,
like, a deep, well, black.
Charity Kase really suited my character and me as a person
because I'm not really into fast fashion.
I'm quite an advocate for the opposite of that,
into reusing fashion and reworking old garments
into new things, which is exactly what my shop does.
And so Charity Kase seem to fit quite well for me
in that respect.
After starting my 365 days, I started getting a few requests
for shows and for performances.
So, it was a big deal for me getting on stage
for the first time.
I was, like, a lumpy devil creature doing,
like, a strip tease to Eartha Kitt, "I Want To Be Evil".
I threw a pie at someone in the audience.
So, it was very like chaotic and twisted.
Since then, my performances have gone from, like,
lip-sinking, throwing pies at people,
to now making a potion as a witch
out of toothpaste, beer, Cheetos, and drinking it.
So, my performances have taken more of an extreme,
like, freak show turn over the past couple of years.
Which, I love being able to hold a room
by doing something disgusting on stage.
I think that's really powerful.
My next step is to paint my teeth black
so that they fit in with the illusion
when I put my lips on later on.
And to do this, I'm going to use this tooth paint.
There we go.
Gotta dry my teeth.
So, I'm just putting on my contact lenses.
It's nice to be showing a different side to drag, as well.
I feel like most of the drag queens around the world tend
to show the generic side of beauty rather than this.
So, this is just a head sock which I've made.
It's kind of a nice way to just cover up my hair.
Next, I'm going to start adding some crystals to my face,
like fantasy, magical, dream world realism.
I think I've always dressed quite extreme.
Like, even in casual day clothes,
dressing up makes me feel good.
And I'm never gonna, like, stop doing that
because it feels like an opportunity missed every day
to be feeling myself, and having a nice time,
and catch my reflection in the window and be like, oh, yes.
Like, I don't want to throw that feeling away.
And the experience itself is quite adrenaline-fueled.
I know that there's probably going
to be pointing and laughing.
I do tend to scare quite a lot of children with my looks.
So, I've now stuck quite a lot of crystals on my head
and my cheeks.
And I'm quite happy with how it's going.
I've got some fins to stick on my ears,
so I think I'm going to do that next.
I'm going to add on my eyelashes next.
I just like really big, extreme, glamorous lashes.
So this is my mask, which I made this morning
out of some foam and some pink tights
which I've sewed tubes in and stuffed.
So, I'm going to hook it around my ears
to finish off my fish fantasy.
Disco fish face complete.
Time to get dressed and I'll be right back.
[enchanting music]
Welcome back.
I just put a little number on for the disco tonight.
We have my gorgeous, sparkly fins
with this stunning leotard,
my beautiful, queen of the ocean crown.
And you know, just a little parka to keep me warm
on a nice evening.
[disco music]
I think that the limit is your imagination.
If you've got a good imagination and you're creative,
then you should be able to make anything, like,
fantastical or mythical.
I found a way to live my life as a new character
every single day.
I like to escape from the world that we live in
by being a monster from another realm.
[disco music]