Tech Couture
15 Mar 2023
LeeLee James’ lifetime love of fashion is a guiding light for the Twirling Tech Goddess, a professional ice skater turned software engineering student.
BY SARA BRUSKIN PHOTOS BY DRUMMOND WEST LeeLee James’ fashion influences span decades. She remembers her grandmother in Mississippi getting dressed for church in outfits she’d made herself. While touring as a professional ice skater, James learned from the designers who made her costumes. And of course, Beyoncé has been blessing James and the rest of the world with fashion inspiration since Destiny’s Child debuted. These days, as James competes in the Denver ballroom scene, she’s endlessly amazed by her peers’ fashion endeavors. “We turn literal trash into treasure,” she says. (For those who have never watched “Pose” or “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the ballroom scene is a subculture founded by Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ individuals who perform in competitions that celebrate drag, fashion, dancing and community.) James, who is studying software engineering at CU-Boulder, incorporates technology like soft robotics and 3D printing into her own creations, bringing in fashion elements that past designers could never have anticipated. She’s working with other students in CU’s robotics lab to develop a garment incorporating artificial neural networks, which pass signals to scales that move in response to the wearer’s arm and leg gestures, enabling a beautiful sartorial display. The garment is intended for drag performances, and James plans to wear it to a ball in Denver when it’s done.
