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Alexander " Sasha" Hedges Steinberg (born June 25, 1987), known professionally as Sasha Velour, is an American drag queen, artist, actor, and stage and television producer, based in Brooklyn. Velour is known for winning the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, her drag revue NightGowns, and her one-queen theatrical work, Smoke & Mirrors.
Velour graduated from University Laboratory High School in Champaign-Urbana in 2004. After high school, she spent a year abroad with family and worked as a part-time security guard at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and interned at the Staatsoper (State Opera) in Berlin, Germany.
Velour obtained an A.B. from the Independent Program (with a focus on Modern Literatures) from Vassar College in 2009. In 2010, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow and completed a project that aimed to understand the role of different art forms in contemporary Russian society. She received an M.F.A. in cartooning in 2013 from the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Prior to pursuing drag as a full-time career, Velour worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, an English language tutor, and as head of production for the children's book publisher, Toon Books.
Velour featured as the cover artist for the June 12, 2023 issue of The New Yorker. Article available on website only.
Velour began performing in New York City in early 2014. She founded Velour, The Drag Magazine (originally named Vym), a magazine about drag, alongside partner Johnny in the summer of 2014. The magazine included interviews as well as varied art forms such as photography, poetry, and illustration that address the power, beauty, and purpose of drag. Three issues were published over two years and the magazine was compiled into a 300-page hardcover book in 2018.
Velour began producing a monthly drag show, NightGowns, in August 2015, at Bizarre Bushwick. The show has been regularly hosted at Bizarre Bushwick and National Sawdust, both in Brooklyn New York. The shows have been celebrated as "beautiful and funny and politically charged" by The New York Times. It was later adapted into a TV series for Quibi.
During the airing of the show, Velour starred in the music video for the non-record single "C.L.A.T." alongside fellow New York City drag artists Peppermint, Aja and Alexis Michelle, all of whom also appeared on the ninth season of Drag Race.
In 2018, Velour partnered with Opening Ceremony to host and direct their New York Fashion Week show. Velour selected 40 LGBT models to walk, creating the first all queer show in New York Fashion Week history. The show featured other notable drag performers (John Epperson, Shea Couleé, Jiggly Caliente, Miss Fame, Farrah Moan, Hungry, and more) as well as a surprise performance from Christina Aguilera.
In 2017, Google commissioned Velour to create a Google Doodle of German singer-actress Marlene Dietrich which appeared on Google's homepage on December 27, 2017, the 116th anniversary of Dietrich's birth. Velour impersonated Dietrich in the Snatch Game challenge on season 9 of RuPaul's Drag Race. For the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 2019, Velour published a detailed history comic about the events of that night titled Three Dollar Riot. She had first begun working on the comic years before for her thesis project at the Center for Cartoon Studies; a previous version of the comic was published in 2012 under the name Stonewall.
Variety featured Velour in the "Power of New York List 2019", and she appeared in Outs annual OUT100 list twice (2017 and 2019). In June 2019, a panel of judges from New York magazine placed Velour 12th on their list of "the most powerful drag queens in America", a ranking of 100 former Drag Race contestants.
During a period of isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2021, Velour produced a series of papier-mâché masks called "Faces of Drag", which honors ten pioneers in "the world history of drag". Those highlighted by the series include Izumo no Okuni, Rebecca Riots, William Dorsey Swann, Mei Lanfang, Barbette, Josephine Baker, Coccinelle, José Sarria, and Divine.
Velour has spoken at the Teen Vogue Summit (June 2018), The Long Conversation at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. (Dec. 2018) and for colleges including Purdue, The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Columbia, Oakland University, and more. She has appeared on the covers of Wussy Mag, Plastik Magazine, Bricks, GayTimes, and she art-directed her pet Italian Greyhound, Vanya's, cover shoot of Dog Magazine which featured an interview with Velour. Her home was featured in People magazine.
In 2019, Velour appeared as herself on episodes of the television shows The Bold Type and Broad City.
Velour adapted her stage show NightGowns into an 8-episode docu-series for the short-form platform Quibi, and it premiered on April 6, 2020. She was executive producer and starred in the show, and produced it with the Documentary Group and music video director Sophie Muller. NightGowns followed Velour and a cast of drag performers across eight episodes as she transforms NightGowns into a full-blown stage act. The New York Times said it was "among the most life-affirming shows you could find on any platform". A second season was ordered in August 2020, but Quibi ceased operations in late 2020. In 2021, NightGowns won the RealScreen Award for "Digital Content, Short Form Content, Non-Fiction”.
In March 2021, Velour starred in Angélica Negrón's The Island We Made, a short art-opera film commissioned by Opera Philadelphia. The film was directed by Matthew Placek. In July 2023, it was announced that Velour, alongside Priyanka and Jaida Essence Hall, would be the new hosts of the fourth season of the reality television series We're Here. The three replaced the previous hosts, Eureka, Shangela, and Bob the Drag Queen.
A 23-city (24 show) tour of the US and Canada opened in San Antonio, Texas on October 21, 2019, and closed in San Francisco, California on November 30, 2019. A 16-city tour of the United Kingdom and the European Union opened on March 2, 2020, in Birmingham, England. After seven performances, the tour was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last performance was played in Dublin, Ireland on March 11, 2020. The European tour resumed in February 2022, playing in often sold-out theaters in 36 cities in 17 countries, reaching from Ireland to Poland.
Velour was featured on the June 2023 cover of the ELLE View, or digital, edition of ELLE Brazil.
| 2017 | RuPaul's Drag Race | Herself (Contestant) | Season 9 (Winner) |
| 2019 | Broad City | Herself | Guest Appearance |
| 2019 | The Bold Type | Herself | Guest Appearance |
| 2023 | Drag Race Germany | Herself | Guest Judge |
| 2024 | We're Here | Herself | Main cast |
| 2025 | King of Drag | Herself | Judge |
| 2017 | Herself | Season 9 | |
| 2020 | The Pit Stop | Season 12, Episode 1 | |
| NightGowns | Executive Producer / Herself | Quibi original | |
| The X-Change Rate | Herself | Guest | |
| 2023 | Entertainment Tonight Canada | ||
| Very Delta |
| + !Year !Title !Role !Notes | |||
| 2021 | The Island We Made | Narrator | Short art-opera film commissioned by Opera Philadelphia |
| 2017 | Brooklyn Nightlife Awards | Drag Queen of the Year | Herself | ||
| Best Visual Artist | |||||
| Best Event Producer | House of Velour | ||||
| 2018 | Brooklyn Nightlife Awards | Best Event Producer | House of Velour | ||
| 2020 | Queerty | Drag Royalty | Herself | ||
| 2021 | RealScreen Awards | Digital Content - Short-Form Content - Non-Fiction | NightGowns | ||
| 2022 | Trinity University's Philosophical Society | The Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage | Herself | ||
| 2023 | Peabody Awards | Entertainment | We're Here |
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