THE ART OF STONE
Alexis Stone is already a legend. And she’s only just getting started. If you haven’t been following the chameleon queen and her seemingly effortless transformations into, well, anybody, then you need to catch up, sis.
It’s easy to box Alexis Stone, real name Elliot Joseph Rentz, into the category of drag simply because she wears a wig and heels, but the truth is Alexis/Elliot transcends the mainstream definition of ‘drag’ popularised on TV to serve something far more fantastical. The cult of Alexis Stone speaks to more than 900,000 followers on Instagram, eclipsing many of the most popular Drag Race girls. With such an awesome profile, Elliot’s creation is one of a handful of (drag) artists in the world to have achieved success without having to lipsync for her life or tackle Snatch Game. (Although I’m confident, given Elliot’s propensity to bring almost any character to life, he’d have Snatch Game sewn up.)
“My mother always allowed me to express myself with creativity, so having a flamboyant self-expression was always apparent,” Elliot says of his early years in Brighton. Although, as his mum battled addiction, life for him and his twin brother was far from rosy. “Growing up in a broken family forces you to use your imagination in distraction. My interaction with relationships and friendships were built from watching them in movies, I emulated what I saw.”
No surprise, then, that young Elliot’s cinematic obsessions centred on women, specifically those who lived on the edge of acceptable social conformity. Films such as , and would eventually inform his work. “With the bonus of my mother,” he adds. “I always gravitated towards lead females with a cutting attitude. Alexis Stone is very much an end product of being around these performances and femme fatales.” The influences extend to the ‘Alexis Stone’ name, taken from Alexis Meade, played by Rebecca Romijn in , and, of course, Sharon).
