Beyoncé pays homage to trans icon Connie Fleming in new photo shoot
With her latest Thierry Mugler look, Beyoncé honours trans icon Connie Fleming. (Getty)
Beyoncé’s ultra queer Renaissance era might be over, but don’t think she’s done paying tribute to the community that has forever been by her side.
Back in March, the music deity rode horseback into the second stage of her current, three-part musical project, veering from disco into her primarily country, yet multi-hyphenated, eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter.
Though she appeared to have swapped mirror balls and dance floors for rodeos and ranches, with her latest photoshoot, she is proving that the two antithetical worlds can exist as one.
And Beyoncé is referencing one of the greatest trans models to ever do it in the process – Connie Fleming.
Earlier this week, fashion powerhouse Thierry Mugler shared a photo across its social media pages, showing the “Texas Hold ‘Em” superstar decked out in the brand’s archival red cowgirl ensemble, complete with dazzling ruby red chaps, bejewelled corset and embroidered cowboy hat.
Dating back to the fashion house’s 1992 spring and summer collection, “Cow-Boys”, the unmistakable garment was first worn by fashion icon and NYC night life legend Connie Fleming, aka Connie Girl, as she tore down the runway at Mugler’s fashion spectacle in Paris that same year.
We’re talking more than three decades ago, at a time where queer people in general – let alone a Black, trans woman – were still firmly confined to underground club scenes, if they were living out at all. Yet Mugler, who died back in 2022, made it part of his mission to include trans women like Fleming in his couture revolution.
In the years since that world-reframing runway, Fleming has often reflected on how Mugler refused to shut trans woman out of the fashion world, and changed the game in the process.
“Both Thierry, Vivienne, and Gaultier – and there were a couple of others – wanted to show the world beauty, in all of its aspects and configurations, and they didn’t put it out there as a spectacle,” she told Models.com just last year.
“It was like, this is real, I am conveying to you something that is not only a dream, but it’s the world we live in.”
In conversation with trans DJ Honey Dijon back in 2020, Fleming noted how Mugler’s support of the trans community didn’t end his name in the industry. If anything, he went from strenght to strength.
“Me being on Mugler’s runway, that should have been the end of his business. People thought no one would ever buy from him anymore. But his business did not go up in smoke,” she questioned. “How does my presence and my being offend you?”
To this day, Fleming is a mainstay on Mugler’s runways.
Mugler’s cowgirl ensemble has since found a further home among the community, with LGBTQ+ stars – including Drag Race favourite Naomi Smalls and Mistress Isabelle Brooks – making it their own.
In adding her own spin on the look, as part of the Cowboy Carter Vinyl photoshoot, Beyoncé is once again confirming that she knows how much the LGBTQ+ community has inspired not only her work, but the work of all other music monoliths riding high in the industry right now.
