Tina Knowles, the mother of singing superstar Beyoncé, has revealed how she got started out as a seamstress: it was by making outfits for drag queens
The detail is included in Matriarch, her memoir which touches not only on her own life but also that of her superstar daughter, and her gay nephew, Johnny.
Beyoncé paid tribute to ‘Uncle’ Johnny, who was actually the son of Tina’s sister Selena, and who made her outfits early on in her career, during her Renaissance era in 2022. On “Heated” she sings: “Uncle Johnny made my dress/that cheap spandex/she looks a mess.” She ended every show each show of her tour clasping a photograph of him holding her as a child. He died from an Aids-related illnesses in 1998.
“When he was 18, Johnny started going to a club called the Kon Tiki,” Knowles wrote in the book, an extract of which was published by Vogue. “He took me to a drag show there, both of our first times, and I was all in.
“Johnny befriended the drag queens, started making them costumes, and became the go-to person to put a look together: showstopper beauty with the detail work that Selena taught him.”
Knowles also recalls Johnny’s dad commenting as the drag queens came to their house. “Them boys went up there but they ain’t never come down. Just those girls.”
She goes on to say: “I started helping Johnny do hair and makeup. More often than not, I would look at one of his clients and think, I could do this really good.
“I’d have a vision, and Johnny and I would style the wigs together. I loved that moment in the mirror when somebody’s transformation happened. You’ve made them look extraordinary but somehow also brought out their true essence.
“[It was] my honour to be Johnny’s protector, to give him the flower he tucked behind his ear.”
Knowles introduced Johnny to the gay scene in Galveston, Texas, where they grew up, and the Kon Tiki bar, Out reported.
“It was just a place of… I can’t tell you the feeling. I get emotional thinking about,” she said. “Just that place of acceptance, that he [was] in a place where nobody is thinking he’s different or strange or whatever, like he just feels at home. He was so happy.
“We were both outcasts and we leaned into each other. He was the closest person in my life. I didn’t feel like anybody else understood me.”
In her memoir, Knowles also discusses Johnny’s diagnosis of Aids-related dementia, his decline, and the awfulness of the HIV wards, calling that period “one of the worst times of my life because I never felt so helpless”.
She went on to tell Out: “I have a whole other book. It’s such great stories about Johnny. If I told all the stories about Johnny, that’d be a whole book by itself. I might just have a Johnny book.
“He was brave and unapologetic during a time when this country wasn’t as accepting. Witnessing his battle with HIV was one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever lived. I’m hopeful that his struggle served to open pathways for other young people to live more freely.”
Matriarch is out now.
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