John Smith in full regalia in a photo from early 2016 (Photo courtesy John Smith)
I was looking for pirate hats, deep in the velvet labyrinth of Carytown’s Premiere Costumes, when I saw the Elsa gown. It was a cheap, China-made confection, marked down to $7. I couldn’t resist buying it for my daughter, even though I knew it would soon turn, Cinderella-like, into rags.
After paying, I took the crown out of the package for her to wear. It broke.
“Let me fix that for you,” said John Smith. You may know Smith as the soft-spoken figure behind the counter at Premiere, with jeweled ears and head swathed in scarves. He whisked the crown away, expertly applied hot glue, smoothed the seam and added a little glitter. It wasn’t just fixed; it was better. Have a tailor reinforce the seams of the dress, he advised, so it would last.
Such a simple suggestion. It’s strange, isn’t it, how we have learned to shrug at shoddiness? In Smith’s eyes, anything in the world can be made better: bigger, brighter, sparklier.
Theater professionals often come to Premiere to ask Smith for help on makeup and costume challenges. Sarah Rawlings, makeup and hair designer for CharacterWorks, a Christian youth theater program, consults Smith every time she’s planning a production. “I feel like that’s his superpower, the passion he has for makeup and for character design,” she says. He’s helped her layer wigs, custom-blend colors and embellish everything. “He had given me some tips that he had gleaned over the years in his… other life,” Rawlings says.
And what a life it was. In the 1990s, when Richmond let its freak flag fly at places like Twister’s, Cafine’s and Fielden’s, Smith was a fixture at every club — although “fixture” seems the wrong word for someone who never wore the same thing twice. Smith might appear in a yellow fur ruff and a towering yellow wig; or a lavish headdress of fruit and flowers; or silver tinsel studded with poinsettias. His eyes might be outlined in gold or violet or red. Always there was glitter, and lots of it.
David Oglesby III remembers the first time he saw Smith, at a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert at the Boathouse in Norfolk in the summer of 1987. On his head, Smith wore a three-foot-tall black cylinder, and his face was festooned with painted spiderwebs. Oglesby was enthralled, and soon joined Smith’s crew of “whimsical vampires.”
Getting ready was half the fun, Oglesby says. “If we were going to hit a club at midnight, he’d damn well have started the process by 3 in the afternoon.” Smith’s look evolved from Goth to glam, Oglesby says; it was never really drag, but “more club kid, creature of the night.”
Once Smith wore a white unitard, sculpted to resemble a naked woman; a blond wig with toys attached to it; and a chiffon negligee. He also carried a gigantic pink bunny. The bouncer at late-night spot Old Dominion Club kicked him out.
“I’m not sure why I got thrown out,” he muses. “I wasn’t doing anything, except wishing I could go home.” Smith wasn’t really a wild child, despite his appearance. “I was the mom that took care of everyone,” he says.
Smith’s lifelong obsession with makeup was sparked by two movies he saw as a child: “Auntie Mame” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”
“I was frightened of Baby Jane, fascinated with Mame,” he says. “Later on, I realized it’s just different aspects, same thing. They’re just as extreme. It’s a fine line between Rosalind Russell/Mame and Bette Davis/Baby Jane. Twelve hours. [Tonight] your makeup looks great — tomorrow, you’re Baby Jane.”
Smith grew up in the Williamsburg-Newport News area. When he was 19, he took off for London. He went to university classes, without being formally enrolled, and learned enough to know that fashion wasn’t for him. He didn’t want to make pants. “I wanted purple seahorses.”
In the early ’90s, Smith moved to Richmond, where he and his crew became famous for their extravagant going-out costumes. Sometimes they would sneak into the Virginia Commonwealth University fashion department. “We’d bring in our music, and Slurpees and vodka, and sit there and sew.” The rule: “If your face didn’t hurt — not enough makeup!” he says.
“John was a legend in Richmond nightclubs,” says Rick Pfamatter, then known as DJ Rick Danger. Smith worked the door at Danger’s dance nights, winning his own band of fans. Even in Washington, D.C., Smith drew stares. “He would be the most outlandish person there,” Pfamatter says, although behind the makeup he was “very quiet and serious.”
One by one, the clubs closed. Cafine’s was shuttered after a drug bust. Twister’s was sold (it’s now Strange Matter). Fielden’s became The Mansion Room.
Smith’s days in costume ended — in public, anyway. “I still miss that,” he says. “But we’re not 18 anymore. We have to lighten the load of all that paint.”
Now Smith is ready for something new. After 15 years at Premiere, he has put in his notice. He needs, he says, to follow his passion, and dreams of starting a theatrical makeup business. He has been talking to friends who run shops in Carytown for advice. “Don’t do it,” some warn, reminding him that retail is a rough road. “You can do it!” some say.
“I think I have to,” Smith replies. Nothing, after all, should stay as it is — there’s always room to add some glitter.
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