Queen Bee Honey Davenport is Here to Shake Things Up in the Hosiery Industry with Honey’s Hose

One of Socialite Life’s favorite queens, RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s Season 11’s Honey Davenport, is on a mission to empower performers of every shape and color with her latest business venture. Honey’s Hose is the world’s first drag and Black queer-owned hosiery brand dedicated to delivering high-quality, inclusive dance tights. Founded by Honey and business partner Saul Williamson, the brand strives to foster an open community that champions self-expression, creativity, and inclusivity for all body types and skin tones while providing a high-quality, high-performance product for entertainers of any skill level.

Honey’s Hose is set to revolutionize the hosiery industry by offering an extensive range of tights designed specifically for drag performers or anyone looking for alternatives that have been previously unavailable to them from other companies. With 13 colors and four sizes tailored to meet diverse needs, Honey’s Hose ensures that every performer can find their perfect shade and fit.

Honey’s Hose is committed to accessibility, comfort, and integrity, ensuring that all products are crafted with the utmost care and exceptional materials. The brand’s values celebrate diversity, creativity, and support for the community it serves.

Honey and Saul have turned to crowdfunding to make their dream a reality, creating a campaign on BackerKit. As part of its long-term vision, Honey’s Hose will also establish the Honey’s Heaux Artist Fund to help reduce financial barriers for emerging drag artists, enabling them to access the perfect hosiery for their performances.

Honey’s Hose is set to revolutionize the hosiery industry by offering an extensive range of tights designed specifically for drag performers or anyone looking for alternatives that have been previously unavailable to them from other companies. With 13 colors and four sizes tailored to meet diverse needs, Honey’s Hose ensures that every performer can find their perfect shade and fit.

Honey’s Hose is committed to accessibility, comfort, and integrity, ensuring that all products are crafted with the utmost care and exceptional materials. The brand’s values celebrate diversity, creativity, and support for the community it serves.

Honey and Saul have turned to crowdfunding to make their dream a reality, creating a campaign on BackerKit. As part of its long-term vision, Honey’s Hose will also establish the Honey’s Heaux Artist Fund to help reduce financial barriers for emerging drag artists, enabling them to access the perfect hosiery for their performances.

We had a chance to chat with Honey and Saul about the inspiration behind Honey’s Hose, their support for the drag community and lots more in our exclusive interview. 

What was the inspiration behind Honey’s Hose? 

Honey: Well, it really was the amount of tights that I have gone through in my career and also the struggles that I’ve had with tights. It’s not just durability. Durability has not been the only issue, although it is one that we at Honey Hose do address.

I’ve been wearing my prototypes since October, and just this past Friday was the first time since October that I ever got a rip, a run, or even like a catch on anything. That was multiple months – which is very unnormal. Normally, I would go through a pair of tights every two to three weeks for the amount of drag that I do, and so for them to last three to four months is a significant difference.

Another thing that inspired us is the fact that drag performers don’t have options. I think our biggest inspiration was the drag performers don’t have options in every size and color and the color accuracy is not right. Tights don’t really come in the color of every human possible, or even close to most that are, you know, of browner variations, or even some that are more yellow or pinkish variations. A lot of times hosiery kind of looks like Crayola crayon colors, not like people color. I would have to dye my tights throughout all the years and all the struggles I’ve had inspired us.

The one other really big thing was comfort. When we came up with this idea, we were on a hike and my feet were hurting, but not from my shoes the night before, not from the nine-mile hike we were on, but from my feet – the hosiery that I had on inside of my shoes and the compression that it had on my feet. And, you know, I happen to be really good friends with a great engineer who has really taken figuring out how to manufacture this ideal design of tights for drag queens by drag queens. And so together with the two of us with my big ideas of how to make and push these to our community and his connections to business mindedness and to how to create relationships with factories and manufacturers to create this product. We’ve been able to accomplish this throughout this year. 

How did you and Saul get connected? And Saul, what is your background?

Saul: Honey and I actually got connected through mutual friends. I had just moved to Palm Springs. I was going on this hike and texting our group and Honey said, “oh my God, I’d love to go on one of those.” That’s how we ended up connecting over the idea.

My background is a lot of engineering software and electrical engineering. I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in electrical engineering. Over the last decade, I’ve done many different projects, working with small businesses, working in large companies anywhere from working with a prime contractor for the US Navy, getting things on aircraft carriers to designing a machine as an equipment for agricultural technology, simulating electrical power grids all over the map.

I’ve been able to learn a lot about the business and working with suppliers, working with artists and all of these different pieces that sort of came together. I sort of was curious about Honey’s experience in tights and we were talking about it during this hike and they expressed that they’ve just really having a difficult time finding something that was workable. They had something, but they weren’t really happy with them. And I said, well, that seems like a perfect idea for a business.

I did some research and found that there isn’t a company out there specifically focused on drag performers. It’s really been a wonderful process working with Honey, trying to understand the needs of drag queens and performers. I think we really have identified a good niche and unlike our competitors that may be focused just solely on performers that don’t really come with good colors or looking on the other end, comfortable tights that aren’t really geared towards performers.

We’ve been able to pull all these different ideas together to really make a product that I think stands out from the crowd. I always do this for joy. I love problem solving because I know it brings people joy. And the day we got our prototypes in, and the amount of joy on Honey’s face, that not only were their tights designed for Honey, Honey’s color, Honey’s complexion, Honey’s size, and holding them up in comparison with the top competitors, it really was almost embarrassing that they haven’t connected that people care that their tights look like them. People care that when they order tights that they’re the right length of their legs. It’s just been a wonderful journey. 

I love the artwork for Honey’s Hose. How did you get connected with that artist (@Rainvart) and how did you come up with the mascot?

Honey: I connected with Rain last year. I was in London opening for a band, the Orion experience, and Rain is a major fan of that band. She just seemed like the coolest person who was in their fan group.

I’m in London by myself, and I need to pick somebody to hang with, and I picked the right person. Me and Rain really connected, and we went to dinner in London, and then out for a wild night on the town. If not for Rain, that London part of our tour would’ve been just the most drab experience.

I was really down in that time about a loss I was experiencing and she really lifted me up and her artwork really lifted me up. At dinner she told me all about her cartoons and about how she created signs and gender inclusive artwork in Barcelona, where she was from, and all of the wonderful awards that she had received and cartoons that she created. I have never seen somebody dedicate themselves to drawing the world as it is with all of our differences and do it so beautifully, and I really wanted to work on something with Rain after that point.

I thought to myself, what is the way to get our branding [for Honey’s Hose]? Because you know, branding is my zhuzh. That’s my thing. Literally, when you look at a drag queen in yellow and black, you think of a bumblebee and you think Honey Davenport. I did that.  So, I was like, how do we get our branding to be a standout from not just people in the hosiery industry, but also from products made by drag queens with my platform?

And I was like, well, if you go to an artist in Barcelona, who’s all about inclusion, which is what you’re trying to create with your brand. It’s just all been so cosmic and kismet, like every meeting, every date aligning in a way so beautifully. So right when I met, met Rain and we discussed this idea, I had an artist right on hand.

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Are you hoping to expand the Honey Hose line into other kinds of shapewear?

Honey: You know, I always paint the future on a very blank canvas so that it has all of the possibilities. The conversation did come up for other versions things we want to create in the near future. And my mind is overwhelmed with the possibilities of what I can now create, not just for hosiery but especially for my community.

This whole process of creating this thing that has not just been an issue for me. This has been like a lifelong problem for drag and to think that there’s a space in which I could insert myself and my work ethic and my friends and my connections and create change has inspired me in such a beautiful way that I know that there’s shapewear and sleepwear and, you know storefronts that are brick and mortar and all of the greatest possibilities. This whole experience has shown me that anything’s possible so I know that there’s tons of possibilities for our future. 

I know you’re doing crowdfunding for Honey’s Hose. Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose that route and kind of how it’s going so far? 

Honey: We really realized in this process, when we set out to create sizes that would go from Jorgeous to Latrice and colors from Detox to Bob the Drag Queen, that was going to be an expensive journey to create. Literally, we found spaces where we were being asked wild minimums to order not only colors but sizes that would fit Silky or Jorgeous, and we really discovered maybe why nobody had taken on the issue that we had been facing because of how expensive the journey would be. When we started up, I was really thankful that Saul was able to put in some personal finances to set us on the way.

I promised to bring that same kind of energy with the leverage I could offer because of my platform. We really felt that with the platform that I have, the best way to figure out the rest of our finances would be to start a crowdfunding campaign. I had seen a lot of other Drag Race superstars fuel things like albums or other small ideas through crowdfunding – and this one is a large idea. This one takes a lot more and has taken a lot more energy than, you know, I never seen myself in the position in which I’m at and, and honey, so most of the time when. Those drag artists have branched off to come up with a product that’s been just that, a product and we’ve really created a company, not just a product, and that takes some fuel. To create that, we didn’t do it fast, we did it delicately with seed funding programs that we’ve been a part of in Palm Springs and business accelerator programs that we’ve been a part of in Palm Springs. We found every single way in which we can connect with our community and get the business resources we need to keep moving forward.

And the next step is finances, right? I mean, the American dream obviously would be to create something that could fuel your life, but this one I think fuels the heart of drag, you know, it fuels something that I’m so passionate about. So, asking the community in which it’s going to empower to support and become a part of our journey, not only seemed like an opportunity to create this, but like something that is a necessity that people want to be a part of this, you know? 

Can you tell me more about the Honey’s Heaux Artist Fund? 

Saul:  In addition to just pantyhose for drag queens you know, our business, Drag Hosiery, is really about helping drag as an art, and the artist fund that we’ve set up is to do just that.

We know that drag art is expensive. There’s a lot of things to buy – hosiery included. Our goal for the first year is to have enough funds in our artist fund, a corporate fund, to be able to support $1,500 a month for drag queens who can apply to our fund…details still incoming. But if you’re just a lover of the arts, go to our crowdfund, drop $20 in our art fund and support us, drag art and help our vision come to life. 

So, Honey. In addition to this what else have you been up to? I saw some new music is on the way, perhaps? 

Oh my gosh. I mean, there’s always new music on the way. Music’s my heart and soul, you know. It’s literally the beat of me. I’ve really been focused on my DJ career. I’ve been spinning a new party that I started out here in Palm Springs called Sundays with Honey at a local a local small leather bar, Dick’s, right on our main gay strip called Arenas. I’ve been working on that new Sunday party and DJing around Southern California and, of course, my spots in New York that are regular to me.

On the music front I have a dope collaboration dropping this year with adult superstar Colton Ford. I’ve been part of the most recent writing team for a lot of Sapphira Cristal’s new music that has come out and she and I have a project that we’re working on releasing in this year as well.

And then I have my like. music dream project that I have had, like, in the, like, sort of in the can building. And I don’t know when that’s coming out, but it is there. There’s a big musical project that I’ve been working on there. I am still not sure when and how I plan on releasing it. 

You can be a backer for Honey’s Hose and donate to the Honey’s Heaux Artist Fund through BackerKit and get the latest updates on the Honey’s Hose website and Instagram. Keep up with all things Honey by following her on Instagram, Threads, Twitch, Spotify and YouTube,