An Exclusive Look Inside Alyssa Edwards's Glitzy, Glittery Glam Room

"When I come home, I want it to be...I don't want to say boring, but kind of!" says Alyssa Edwards, aka Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson, of his understated new house in Mesquite, Texas, a respite from evenings spent lobbing shade onstage as one of the world's most famous and beloved drag queens. "I need it to be a quiet place where I can just marinate in the beauty of life." Quiet it is, with a stately suburban vibe that, for someone known onstage for a wardrobe as over-the-top as the personality, includes a shocking amount of beige. That all ends, however, at the door of the "glam room," a riot of glitter and glitz where Johnson—whom we'll henceforth refer to as Alyssa, with the drag-queen-preferred "she" pronoun—gets ready for shows, appearances, and pageants. "I want it to be colorful and fun so I can morph into Alyssa like a Power Ranger," says Edwards, a veteran of RuPaul's Drag Race and her own Netflix reality series, Dancing Queen. "In 60 minutes or less!"

The place would make a fine drag museum, so copious is Edwards's collection of dresses, wigs, boas, and headpieces, all of which help to create a character she describes as Alexis Carrington with a twist of Katy Perry. Alyssa Edwards fan art—including a Warholesque painting made by one of her 1.2 million Instagram followers from Brazil—nearly covers one wall. "As chaotic as it is, it's organized chaos," says Edwards, who prioritized cabinet space for the easy sorting of accessories. "It's very much the Alyssa Edwards code. Meaning the average Joe is going to be like, 'What in gay hell is all this?'"

Having not only starred in two seasons of Drag Race but also competed in drag pageants for years, Edwards estimates that the room now contains more than 300 costumes, ranging from cocktail dresses to full-on dance getups. She consistently rotates things out—wearing the same outfit twice, she believes, is almost cheating the audience. "When you are a drag queen, you are flamboyant. You don't want to be caught wearing the same thing multiple, multiple times," she says. "There are only a few things I've held onto through the years, like the dresses I won Miss USA and Miss American in. But even those will have an expiration date because the room gets so tight. Or I may have to turn my garage into a full-fledged fantasy facility." The one dress she won't part with? A black beaded number worn by her grandmother to one of Edwards's pageants. As for what all this drag has ended up costing Edwards, it's almost incalculable at this point, but the most expensive gown was from her Miss USA contest. It ran $9,000, including the accessories, wig, and "the whole kit and caboodle." After that, Edwards tends to splurge on shoes. "I do have a good collection of Christian Louboutin platform pumps. Every gal's got to have a nice shoe. It's like that Cinderella story."

The room is also lined with crowns from Edwards's many pageant wins, including Miss All-American Goddess. The largest is only a few months old, bestowed by the mayor of West Hollywood at 2018's Halloween Ball, along with a key to the city. "I grew up as a little gay boy with four sisters. Watching Miss Texas and Miss Universe was a family affair," says Edwards, who, when not touring the world as Alyssa, teaches competition dance full-time as Justin. "The older I got and the more crowns I started accumulating, my mom started saying, 'Well, none of my daughters won Miss Texas, but my son sure did!'"