What makes a family? For many in the Texas queer community, family isn’t made from blood but from bonds made by choice. House of Lepore is one of those Texas families, grown from many different sources of love, encouragement, and support into the massive force it now represents in Central Texas’ ballroom community.
Ballroom has its history rooted in the 1920s with drag balls, where gender-bending performers would show off their drag finery for a panel of judges, not unlike a beauty pageant. While many drag balls were integrated, there was still a great deal of racism in the ball system, such as the overwhelming amount of white winners versus Black winners. The more modern scene developed in Seventies Harlem when Black and brown competitors, fed up with mainstream drag balls’ racial bias, started putting on their own events. House of Lepore continues in that tradition, having thrown the first official South by Southwest ball, the Big Stage Ball, in 2022, as well as a monthly appointment at Swan Dive, Austin Vogue Nights.
Balls are kept alive by the “families” who throw them, also known as houses. Houses are structured like a nuclear family – a “mother” and “father” who support and guide their “children,” or other house members. At the head and the heart of this particular family is Mother Natalie Lepore. Her journey began in Philadelphia, having come out of the closet and into the ballroom scene via Philly’s Attic Youth Center. A friend brought her to voguing competitions held there, which featured performers pitting their unique styles of the vogue form against each other. The scene hit home to the lifelong dancer as a new style of physical expression. “It was so cool,” she recalled. “I wanted to be a part of it.”
Most ballroom families take their house names from gay male designers or fashion brands. In doing so, members also take on that name as their performance surname. According to Natalie, the name Lepore was bestowed by former member Shayla Shimmy, after model, singer, activist, and legendary NYC Club Kid Amanda Lepore. The choice paid tribute to the trans woman icon in everything from attitude to accessories. “Even with our aesthetic,” Natalie said, “the way we dress, the way we carry ourselves, everything gave Amanda.”
Before House of Lepore started, however, Natalie helped start the groundbreaking House of Kenzo in San Antonio as well as the Plastic Collective. In Plastic, she met hip-hop artist and DJ BabiBoi – aka Dorian Delafuente – who founded House of Lepore alongside Natalie in 2020. Beginning as an art collective isn’t the typical ballroom story, but Dorian said the transition was seamless. “We do still sort of operate as a collective,” they said, “where we help each other with pushing our own expression.”
While Dorian and Natalie made up the initial bulk of the House of Lepore, they began adding family members quickly. “It was a process of going out to the clubs,” Dorian said. “Finding and meeting people and being like, ‘Oh, I would love for them to be a part of the House.'” From that process, House of Lepore has grown large enough to have satellite chapters in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, as well as one or two members up in New York City.
“I can play around with my masculine and feminine energy and that’s all because of the House of Lepore.” – Chilly, Prince of Lepore
With more members in more places, there’s also a need for more leadership, so in addition to Mother Natalie and Father of Lepore Tarik, there are separate mothers and fathers for different Lepore city outposts. Marcus Lepore, model and lifelong Austinite, is the Austin father, and is the top of the Lepore phone tree, in a sense. If members in Austin need help getting their effects together – effects being what ball competitors wear to the competition – Marcus is the one to call. Same goes for practice space needs, financial help, or even if a member needs to be picked up in the wee hours of the morning. “I’m a point of contact for support within the chosen family,” he said. “Somebody who will actually show up and help you find a solution.”
Support was the main reason Marcus got into Lepore. He had previously been a part of the Austin House of Giuseppe but didn’t find it compatible to his needs, so he met Natalie as a “007,” or a voguer not attached to a house. After attending the Lepore New Year’s ball and leaving thoroughly impressed, he walked their Mortal Kombat-themed Flawless Victory Ball. Natalie noticed him after Marcus snatched a win in the Face category, where competitors go “face-to-face” serving the beauty of their facial features.
“She was like, ‘You need to be a Lepore,'” Marcus recalled, “and I was like, ‘You got to take me to dinner.'” Playing hard to get paid off as Natalie wined and dined him, asking about his experiences with the house he’d just left as well as what he’d need to find success in ballroom. For Marcus, what he required of any house he joined was support from experienced members who could field questions and provide guidance. “Some members can just come [in and] they’re flawless,” he said. “They don’t need 100% support all the time. They come in and they conquer. I happen to not be one of those members.”
“I needed a house with a little bit more structure,” Marcus said. “With people with a little bit more experience. I was able to find that in Lepore.” He added that his joining was influenced by Lepore’s reputation as “the house where class lives, and I like to think of myself as a classy type of person.” In joining the house, Marcus said he accessed a part of himself he hadn’t before. “Lepore didn’t change me so much as noticed the potential that was deep within me,” he said, “helped me to uncover it and allow some light to shine on my plant and allow it to grow into a beautiful flower.
“I just really want to emphasize that has never been normal to me to find [in] family and friends outside of blood,” Marcus said. “Lepore really gives that [support] on so many levels in which I have seen within my personal family. I have a good family structure at home [and] you can find those elements that have actually helped me to excel in my personal life at home [in Lepore].” For that reason, he made his leadership commitment to Lepore, and to ballroom overall, in order to help others grow their own flowers, too.
One such flower blooms in younger member Chilly, the current prince of Lepore. They found the house in 2022 at that year’s SXSW ball. “I saw that ball and then went up to Mother and said, ‘I wanna be in your house,'” Chilly recalled, “and she told me I needed to win a ball before I could become a Lepore.” After attending night after night, Chilly ended up winning at last June’s Austin Vogue Night. Natalie messaged them the next morning with an offer to join the house. Being a Lepore for Chilly meant finding a freedom of expression previously unavailable, like being able to design their own effects for balls. “I can play around with my masculine and feminine energy and that’s all because of the House of Lepore,” Chilly said. “I have so many people around me who stand true [to] who they are and what they believe in and it wouldn’t be right for me to not hold that same weight.”
For Adrien Lepore, a social media influencer who also works in tech, joining the house was always more about providing support rather than needing it. “I would say in this relationship, I’m more of a giver than a taker,” they said of their influence in House of Lepore, as they are the same age as Mother Natalie. It was through her performance work that Adrien first met Natalie, impressed by her singular nature. “She’s a Black trans woman in Austin,” they said. “You didn’t see a lot of trans women doing the work that she was doing [and] just performing and being out there.”
“She was like, ‘You need to be a Lepore,’ and I was like, ‘You got to take me to dinner.’” – Marcus, father of the Austin Chapter of House of Lepore
As a mentor figure, Adrien said they often consult with Natalie about financial matters. They recalled past discussion of what House of Lepore would be paid for gigs, only for the response to be a shrugged-off, “Girl, does it matter?” For Adrien, the money-to-time-spent equation mattered a great deal and still does, especially for Black, queer folks. “My time is money, like time is the most precious resource, and I’m not going to put a bunch of time into something that doesn’t feel equitable for me,” they said. “I would always tell [Natalie], if someone offered you something, that’s a tipoff for negotiations, like Cher Horowitz would say. Throw a number back and see where it goes.”
Natalie took those negotiation concerns seriously. “I’m being very protective over the culture,” she said, “because there’s some people that are excited about it and they want to profit off of it versus giving back to the community.” Understanding ballroom practices – and even more importantly, respecting those practices – is a must for those attending a House of Lepore ball. In particular, the category system by which modern balls operate is exclusionary by nature. As an example, Natalie pointed to the Realness category, which is predicated on the ability of performers to “pass” or be believable as a certain gender. Yet many cis people don’t understand why they aren’t allowed to compete under their birth gender. “Everyone can attend, but everyone can’t be included,” Natalie explained. “You have people now [who] have different spectrums of identity, you know, but just like a competition, you have rules.”
But Austin is learning and has embraced House of Lepore wholeheartedly. “People have a great time,” Natalie said. “They leave saying how their lives have been changed.” Her experience testifying against Senate Bill 12, a bill meant to restrict minors from attending drag shows, during the 88th Texas legislative session was a massive emotional drain, hearing two days of cruel comments about the queer community. “The things they said about us were so nasty,” she recalled. “They made it seem like we were monsters.” House of Lepore stands in direct opposition to those hateful comments by providing a loving and supportive space for queer expression. “A lot of us have been through the same things like trauma and life,” Natalie said. “We just want the best for each other. It’s what makes us a family.”
Follow House of Lepore on Instagram and TikTok @HouseofLepore.
This article appears in June 23 • 2023.
