Sasha Velour

Velour tried out for RuPaul's Drag Race's eighth season but was not selected to participate.[13] In 2017, she competed on and ultimately won the ninth season of the show.[14][15] Allison Shoemaker of The A.V. Club named Velour's lip sync to Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" in the season finale the best TV performance of 2017.[16] The lip sync was later referenced on Saturday Night Live, during Kate McKinnon's impression of Elizabeth Warren.[17][18] In June 2019, a panel of judges from New York magazine placed Velour 12th on their list of "the most powerful drag queens in America", a ranking of 100 former Drag Race contestants.[19]

Following her time on the show, Velour continued to work as a drag queen and expanded into the fashion industry. She selected 40 LGBT models to walk for Opening Ceremony in New York Fashion Week 2018.[20][21][22] She attended Rihanna's fourth annual Diamond Ball in September of that year.[23][24] At the end of 2017, Velour's artwork of German singer-actress Marlene Dietrich was used as a Google Doodle on the performer's 116th birthday on December 27, 2017. Velour had impersonated Dietrich in the Snatch Game challenge on her season of Drag Race.[25] On December 7, 2018, Velour participated in The Long Conversation at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.[26]

Velour starred in the music video "C.L.A.T." alongside fellow New York City drag queens Peppermint, Aja and Alexis Michelle, all of whom also appeared on the ninth season of Drag Race.[27] Velour's makeup and look transformations have been featured in publications such as Vogue,[28] Cosmopolitan,[29] Vanity Fair,[30] and Billboard.[31]

Steinberg's comics and illustrations have appeared in The Nib, InkBRICK,[32] Comics Workbook Magazine,[33] QU33R,[34] Cicada Magazine[35] and others, under the names Sasha Velour and Sasha Steinberg. Steinberg also created a series of comics entitled "Stonewall", which told the story of the Stonewall riots from multiple viewpoints. The series was called "a smart, beautiful and artful take on a significant and difficult historical event" by Highlow Comics.[36] A solo gallery show of Steinberg's illustration work, "Nightrooms", was held at the Black Box Gallery in Brooklyn in March 2016 and Steinberg's cut paper work was part of the group show "Coney Island Babies, Visual Artists from the Brooklyn Drag Scene" at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division that opened in Manhattan in November 2012.[37] In March 2017, Steinberg designed a long sleeve T-shirt for "Contemporary Drag", a limited-edition fashion line for the New Art Dealers Alliance's (NADA) in collaboration with Print All Over Me.[38]

Steinberg founded Velour, The Drag Magazine (originally named Vym), a bi-yearly publication about drag, alongside partner Johnny in the summer of 2014.[39] Steinberg serves as the magazine's artistic director. The first issue ("What is Drag?") was released June 2015 and the second issue ("Realness") was released in October 2016.[40] The magazine includes interviews as well as varied art forms such as photography, poetry, and illustration that address the power, beauty, and purpose of drag.[41]

Since August 2015, Steinberg has produced Nightgowns, a monthly drag show in Brooklyn. The events have been regularly hosted at Bizarre Bushwick and National Sawdust. The shows have been celebrated as "beautiful and funny and politically charged" by The New York Times.[42] In 2020, Steinberg starred in her own Quibi show, NightGowns, which follows Velour across eight episodes as she transforms Nightgowns into a full-blown stage act.[43]