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Man’s best friend got a makeover Tuesday night at The Dressing Room’s first annual Doggy Drag Show.
Owners went all out, dressing up their pooches in tutus and fake boobs, and making special trips to Build-a-Bear to find the perfect wig.
The red carpet was rolled out for this occasion, or rather the bright green Astroturf strip the pageant contestants and their handlers glided down with a sniff here and there. The crowd cheered when dogs shook their tails with drag-queen style sass.
The event was held in support of the Arizona Humane Society and the Phoenix drag community. Many of the dogs who participated were rescued from the shelter originally.
According to Kyu Utsunomiya, a partner at The Dressing Room, Be+Coffee+Food+Stuff and Conceptually Social Catering, 100 percent of the proceeds went to AHS.
“All of us at [Conceptually Social’s Concepts] are dog people and have adopted from the Arizona Humane Society so we came up with the idea to help bring awareness to the shelter,” Utsunomiya said. “We were going to do it small, but it kept growing. Next year we’re going to double or triple the event size.”
Page Englert, the Institutional Giving Manager at AHS, said they’ve made a little over $1,200 from ticket sales.
“They came to us with the idea,” Englert said. “We didn’t have a fundraising goal and just hoped for the best without any expectations.”
The local celebrity judges for the evening were Marshall Shore, the official “Hipstorian” of Arizona, and Sonja Jae Savage, reigning Miss Gay Arizona USofA at Large.
Shore said The Dressing Room’s history inspired the event, as the building served as a dressing room for Phoenix’s first drag bar.
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“We planned this event within three months and originally planned for only one prize, but twenty dogs walked tonight so we added a runner-up and two alternatives,” Shore said.
The winner was Little Miss Poundcake, a basset hound from Phoenix styling a curly wig, a pink tutu and a tiara between her floppy ears.
Contact the reporter at Melanie.Whyte@asu.edu.
