TAYCE: THE ART OF BEING THAT BITCH

Tayce doesn't really enter a room. She arrives.There is an extraordinary theatricality to her presence — the kind that makes even standing still feel like a performance. Beautiful, sharp, glamorous and just the right amount of dangerous, Tayce has built a career around understanding one very important thing: being memorable is an art form.

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Born in Newport and now firmly established within the wider London fashion and entertainment world, Tayce first became a household name through RuPaul's Drag Race UK, where her looks, runway confidence and razor-sharp personality quickly made her one of the season's defining queens. But looking back, it feels less like the show created Tayce and more like it simply gave the rest of us a much bigger window into a star who was already there. Because the drag is only part of the story.

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Tayce has an instinct for fashion that feels almost architectural. Everything about the presentation is considered: the silhouette, the makeup, the hair, the attitude, the way she holds herself and, crucially, the expression she gives the camera. She can look impossibly glamorous one moment and wonderfully intimidating the next. There is always a little danger lurking underneath the beauty. And then comes the humour.

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Tayce understands that glamour becomes even more powerful when you are willing to completely take the piss out of yourself. Her personality is enormous, but never feels overly polished. There is camp, quick wit, ridiculousness and that very particular Welsh sense of knowing exactly how funny a situation can become. It is why she works so beautifully beyond the traditional drag stage.

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Fashion campaigns, music videos, television, presenting, dance and live performance have all become extensions of the same Tayce universe. She has appeared in major campaigns and projects, including work with Coca-Cola, Jean Paul Gaultier, Bluebella and Heinz, while her fashion presence has continued to grow alongside her performance career.

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Her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing was another brilliant example of that crossover, placing a drag artist into one of Britain's most mainstream entertainment institutions and allowing Tayce to do what she does best: turn a stage into hers. But perhaps the most important thing about Tayce is the sheer confidence she projects. Not confidence as perfection. Confidence as survival. Confidence as self-invention.

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She has spoken about the importance of being visible as a gay, Black, Welsh performer and of becoming the kind of role model she didn't have growing up. That gives all the glamour a deeper meaning. The heels, the lashes, the body, the attitude and the ridiculousness are not simply decoration. They are freedom.

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Tayce has built a career from refusing to make herself smaller. And perhaps that is why she remains so magnetic. She doesn't ask permission to be beautiful. She doesn't ask permission to be funny. She doesn't ask permission to take up space. She simply looks into the camera, gives us that face and reminds us: I'm that bitch. And honestly? We believe her.