Fashion designer, performer Brandon Hilton fights for the limelight

“You can ask me anything,” Brandon Hilton told me over the phone. “Nothing is off limits and nothing angers me.”

Hilton was reassuring me after hearing me stumble over my words, probably trying to ask too deeply about his childhood. Earlier in our conversation, his 35-year-old father casually mentioned that when he was a child, his father killed someone in front of him. I wondered how the injury had affected him.

Hilton grew up in Pacolet, a small rural town in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, about 60 miles southwest of Charlotte. He was 2 years old when his father started beating and harassing him, and when he was 7 years old, his father shot and killed his mother’s boyfriend in front of a McDonald’s. He has been in prison ever since.

In retrospect, Hilton feels that he never had a childhood after what he experienced at a young age. He said he felt compelled to grow up early to help his mother raise his sister.

But it’s this past trauma that drives him.

“It’s always been my biggest motivation to get out of Pacolet, South Carolina, and make something of myself so that I don’t have my father’s shadow that will last the rest of my life,” Hilton said. “I don’t want this to be my legacy, so I’m motivated to do everything I can to erase that shadow.”

Hilton, who now lives in Charlotte with his wife, has spent years building his name and talent to become the multifaceted man he is today – singer, model, fashion designer, pig farmer, podcast host, drag queen, actor and soon-to-be author.

As it turns out, beyond the shadow of the past is not only the light, but for Hilton, the main light.

Born on Myspace

Brandon Hilton likes to say he was “born on Myspace.” Because that’s where it all started.

He remembers being fresh out of high school when a friend told him about the first-of-its-kind social networking site in the mid-2000s. He signed up using the desktop computer at his grandfather’s house and added a basic profile picture, but things didn’t stay basic for long.

As he gained more friends on the site, Hilton expanded his content. He credits his platinum blond hair and the grungy photos of his grandmother in his garage with helping him stand out.

Once he reached a million friends on Myspace, that’s when he started getting opportunities to work with photographers and producers, he recalled.

“Then I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to use this and not really have a job, but a way to make money and get myself out of Pacolet, South Carolina.’ And that’s what I did,” Hilton said.

A producer in Texas convinced Hilton to move to Dallas to work on the musical. At the time, he was recording songs for his Myspace page using the microphone on his laptop, so he was intrigued by the possibility of producing a high-quality product.

While in Dallas, he worked at Radio Disney, doing commercials and voicing promos on Disney XD, though he later claimed he was fired for a post on MySpace that was deemed “too racist.”

“I think it was a little homophobic that I got fired from Disney because I wasn’t crazy or anything like that,” Hilton said. “I think they weren’t ready for me at that time.”

Today, Hilton classifies his music as dance pop, but he described his work earlier in his career as more aggressive electronica.

“I loved the first Luciana, where the MySpace sound beats the high-energy dance and everything is brutal,” he says. “But I grew up very quickly from there because I wanted my music to be legit and my voice to be better produced.”

Brandon Hilton’s debut album Dirty on the dance floor It charted at #11 on Hot Topic/Shockhound’s Most Downloaded Albums of 2010.

For his sophomore album, NightHe worked with Edwin McCain producer Marcus Suarez in hopes of a Grammy nomination, but the album peaked at #63 on the iTunes Pop Charts when it debuted in 2011.

Hilton’s music is in the 2012 film. Midnight cabaretHe was featured in the song “Glamour Zombie” on Oxygen. Bad women’s club. Following the release of his debut album in 2013, he released a compilation of singles and remixes. Brandon Hilton’s Best.. So Far!!

His fourth and latest album, RebirthIt was released in January 2021 and reached #9 on the US iTunes Dance Chart. “Love Again” is his latest single, released in February 2021, although he recently uploaded his old Myspace music to YouTube. Hilton’s MySpace MixtapeFeaturing eight tracks from 2007-’09.

Much of Hilton’s music is available on his YouTube channel, though he plans to re-release the music on streaming platforms as part of a new project he calls an “old album.” Released sometime this year, it contains more than 75 tracks and a handful of new songs that chronicle his music from his MySpace days to the present.

As with most musicians, as Hilton has evolved as a person and artist, the messages behind his music have changed – becoming darker and more serious, but still fun. He cites Rebirth as his most personal record to date.

“I was going through some heartbreak and I lost some family members that were very important to me,” Hilton said. “So the songs on that are still like fun party songs, but they’re very personal, because I touch on a lot of personal things in my lyrics.”

whose house

Learning to sew wasn’t just a hobby for Brandon Hilton, but it was necessary for him to wear the clothes he envisioned for tours and music videos. His skill came into play especially while in drag—first in Texas and then around the Carolinas—eventually emerging under the name Oneya Man.

“I wanted to be loved. RuPaul’s Drag Race I wanted to have stage costumes, and really cool costumes, but there weren’t any stores in the country that sold drag queen costumes and super fancy stuff, so I had to start making them,” Hilton said.

It didn’t take long before drag queens from all over the world started asking Hilton to make their dresses. Hilton also began dressing celebrities he had met over the years while in the entertainment industry.

In the year In 2018, he created The House of Man, a fashion brand that has dressed major artists including Kim Petras, Dorian Electra and Ali X and has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Paper Magazine. Clothes are available online, at various pop-up events and at Stash Pad, a vintage boutique in Southeast Charlotte’s Grier Heights neighborhood.

The House of Man has shown shows and clothes at New York and Paris Fashion Weeks. nail on TNT; RuPaul’s Drag Race; The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Resurrection on AMC’s Shudder streaming service; And The queen of drugsGerman Drag Race TV series judged by Heidi Klum.

“If there’s a drag TV show, we’ve definitely contributed at least one or two costumes,” Hilton said.

Hilton’s latest work can be seen on season four of HBO Max. Doom Patrola TV series based on the DC Comics superhero team of the same name, in which Hilton designed the costumes of drag queen superhero Maura Lee Carrupt.

Being a model gives Hilton a unique perspective as a fashion designer because he understands what it takes to make a garment fashionable. He says he takes inspiration from the latest trends as well as from his daily life and things around him, such as a saltwater fish tank.

“I’ve got nice corals and fish and I like the way they look, the way the coral looks when it’s sloshing around in the water and the way the finches look and things like that – sea floaters especially. But I’ve always been obsessed with the ocean, coral and marine life, and I get a lot of inspiration from that.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Hilton is currently writing two books: The Drag Queen Guide and Autobiography.

Hilton hopes his life story, which revolves around his difficult upbringing, his grandfather’s suicide and his own mental health struggles, will help him figure out who he is.

And part of that is his pigs – no doubt going back to his rural roots. Until recently, Hilton had 11 pigs living in the house (he now has six). He said they help him deal with the online backlash, death threats and hate mail.

“It’s nice to have my little farm with my chickens and my chihuahua and my pigs, so it gets me out of this fake online world where people like that hate me so much,” Hilton said. “Obviously I have a lot of support and people love me and follow me from all over the world, but it only takes one person telling you to kill yourself to bring you down, you know?”

Also on Hilton’s mind lately is his father’s possible release from prison within the next year. He said he was hesitant about where they stood.

“The last thing my father did before he was arrested was to point the gun at me and pull the trigger, but he had no bullets because he had only used it on my mother’s boyfriend. So the lasting impression in my head has been like this all these years. And if my father comes out, is he going to kill me? Hilton said. His sister assured me with his father that it would not be the case.

When I asked him what he would say to himself at age 7, he said, “Don’t give up on yourself.”

“I’ve tried to kill myself twice in my life and I often wonder, if I had succeeded instead, you know, going crazy over little things and not dying?” he said. “The best thing I can say is to hold on. Don’t think this is the end, because the world is your oyster.”

Hilton struggled to emerge from the shadow of his past. If not, he would be poised for greatness and standing in the limelight today.