Le Filip Drips with Pleasure
MERDE captures the pleasing essence of Parisian Drag Queen Le Filip at Place Vendôme
Photography: DARIUS SALIMI
“Growing up as a kid in Croatia, I was always dressing up. I was often alone and the new kid in school. So it always took some time to have friends and people surrounding me. It started like that. I would imagine different worlds and characters - not necessarily female. I would dress up and play by myself.
I think I first saw a drag queen in a porn movie. In this case she wasn’t acting, or involved in sexual acts. She was just comic relief in between scenes and the the teacher making the boys fuck. It scared me and attracted me at the same time.
Then, on Pride in 2012, I decided that I would go out. At that time, the Pride in Croatia was not so happy or gay. It was very political and angry, because it is an oppressive country where you really feel the patriarchy and a very aggressive male gaze. None of my friends wanted to go. It’s a bit scary because there was an anti-pride happening at the same time. It was my first real performance and I decided to lie, because in the city everyone knows each other. Like, if somebody farts everybody knows it. I contacted some Pride organizers and told them I was an ‘experienced drag queen’ asking if I could come and perform *laughs*. The audacity and the nerve that I had. They let me perform at the after party. When I arrived, nobody recognized me because I was in drag. I would be lying if I was saying it was only about dressing up. It’s also this “wow” factor and that addictive sense of fame.
The act in itself is empowering, I’ve been doing this for 7-8 years now, and I still get that feeling like a truck hit me once I look at myself, waking up as if I’ve put on everything that I really am. When you feel a bit disconnected from society, I feel taking it even further such as dressing up in drag really has an impact.
ON HER STYLE:
“Le Filip has been through a lot of aesthetic phases. Only now I’ve started unraveling, going back to my original vision of the 60s and 70s and this idea of this ditsy debutante or house wife that has a foul mouth, smoking a cigarette; very Jessica Lange in American Horror Story.”
ON HER ETHOS:
“Drag is a way for me to communicate things I cannot say as Filip, things I can’t put into words because I don’t have the same train of thought without the mask. It’s comfortable for me to be in hiding. That’s why I like doing drag, because I’m hiding in a way. But I’m also exposing everything. At the end of the day, I’m not really responsible.”
ON THE COMPETITION:
“When Drag Race came to Netflix in France, it really exploded in Paris. The competition of the show seeped into real life. It’s kind of a shame. To me, fighting a bitch in a club is honorable. Queens used to squash drama by making it part of a lip sync performance. But now it’s all through social media and became so petty.“
“I lie to myself. I mean, drag is a lie. Even the sole act of lip syncing is a lie. It’s like, what’s real and what’s not? It’s about how to blur the lines and make the surreal real.”
