Velour is the creator and host of “NightGowns”, running for over 10 years in New York City—considered one of the best drag shows of all time.
Her first one-person show, “Smoke & Mirrors” (2019-2022), toured to 90 theaters around the world, including the Folies Bergère and the London Palladium. Her second, “The Big Reveal” (2023-2025) toured to 63 theaters, with hit runs at Steppenwolf, La Mama, and Berkeley Rep. Critics wrote: “Velour is an artist, through and through, and [The Big Reveal] feels the beginning of a larger and genre-bending body of work.” (SFist) And “[The Big Reveal] redraws the boundaries of drag and theater.” (SF Chronicle)
Her namesake production company, House of Velour, has produced live shows and video for HBO, Quibi, NY Fashion Week, MAC Cosmetics, Audible, Lyft, Absolut Vodka, LaJolla Playhouse, and more. House of Velour has been praised as “disrupting the business of drag” (Fast Company) for its artist-driven, transparent, and multi-disciplinary approach.
In 2023, Velour released a best-selling book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, which explores the untold history of drag, interwoven with stories from her life as a young queen (Harper, 2023). The LA Review of Books raved, “Already known as a top-notch drag queen, illustrator, and performer, Velour has now proven with ‘The Big Reveal’ that she is also an exemplary historian and theorist. Just as Velour works in her book to celebrate historically significant drag performers, ‘The Big Reveal’ will surely canonize her as not only one of the best drag queens of her generation but also one of the definitive voices on the history and art of drag.”
In 2017, Velour gained international attention when she competed on and won the 9th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, the same year the competition won its first Emmy. Her finale lip-sync to “So Emotional” (Whitney Houston) increased streams of the song by 500%.
In 2020, she executive-produced her own limited TV series, an adaptation of “NightGowns” directed by Sophie Muller and co-produced by The Documentary Group, which received a RealScreen Award and was hailed as one of “the most life-affirming shows you could find on any platform” (NY Times). In 2023, Sasha joined the cast of HBO’s Emmy and Peabody Award-winning “We’re Here”, which was nominated for two Critics Choice Real TV Awards, Best Ensemble Cast and Best Structured Unscripted Series (won). In 2025, she served as a head judge on “King of Drag”, the first televised Drag King competition in history.
As an illustrator and designer, Sasha has produced several comic books, and an anthology about drag called Velour (2013-2018). She drew the Google Doodle for Marlene Dietrich in 2018, and created a self-portrait for the cover of The New Yorker in 2023.
Velour is the only child of Mark D. Steinberg, a professor and writer of History (aka “Papa Velour”) and Jane T. Hedges, a copyeditor who passed of cancer in 2015. She is an alumnus of Vassar College, holds an MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies, and was a Fulbright scholar in Moscow. Velour currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner Johnny and their beloved Italian Greyhound, Vanya.