Maxwell Vice: The Mayor of Bushwick and NYC's Fashion Disrupter

TRAN MAGAZINE: Your work exists at the intersection of photography, fashion, nightlife, and community. Having come up through New York’s underground scene, how have the city’s queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming communities shaped your approach to fashion, beauty, and photography?

MAXWELL VICE: Growing up in Bushwick, I felt very ostracized as a child. There was very little trans or nonbinary representation, let alone gay, lesbian, or bisexual representation. Visibility is incredibly important when we talk about identity because until you see someone who looks like you, or someone you aspire to look like, it can be difficult to envision yourself.

As more people came into Bushwick and became visible within my community, I learned more about myself. I came out at 11, and at the time, I thought I understood everything there was to know about my gender. But as more people entered my neighborhood and expressed their transness, gender fluidity, and other identities, I realized there was so much more I could explore.

When I look at beauty and fashion photography today, I seek out people who are pushing forward new generations of iconography, identity, and visibility. I try to keep that at the core of my work because it personally influenced me. If trans people hadn’t moved into Bushwick and made themselves visible, I might never have expanded beyond identifying as a gay man into understanding myself as a queer person.

TRAN MAGAZINE: You have worked across photography, fashion publications, design, music, and nightlife, often creating opportunities for Black, brown, queer, and gender-nonconforming people. When you bring members of your community into established fashion spaces, how do you make sure they are respected and cared for?

MAXWELL VICE: Let me tell you something: I walk into these fashion rooms, and the one thing people know about me is that I don’t give a fuck. I’m unapologetic, and I’m vocal. At my core, I consider myself an abolitionist. To me, abolition means protecting one another, and I carry that mindset into professional spaces, too.

I use my mother as an example of what it means to bring someone from the underground into fashion. When I bring her into a fashion house like Luar, where she’s getting her hair, makeup, and styling done, I make sure the team is prepared for her beforehand. She isn’t an industry model who is accustomed to the pressures and critiques of the fashion industry. She’s a pioneer in our community.

You can’t bring someone like her into a room and squeeze her into a dress that doesn’t fit or make her uncomfortable. You need to have her measurements right. When she sits in the makeup chair, she needs an artist who understands her skin tone and knows how to work with her complexion and palette.

When underground culture enters corporate fashion spaces, those people shouldn’t be treated as novelties or outsiders. They are the seasoning. They bring the flavor directly from the source. We shouldn’t treat them like afterthoughts; if anything, they deserve more care, respect, and attention on set.

I’m protective of the people I bring into these spaces. I make sure everyone feels good in their outfit, their look, and themselves. At the end of the day, we’re artists. If you’re not feeling good, you can’t contribute to good art.

Honestly, I treat a major luxury house the same way I treat an independent streetwear label from the hood. Respect me, I’ll respect you. If we’re communicating and doing good work together, that’s what matters. But when I’m bringing people from the underground into these spaces, I make sure they receive extra love because they’re special.

TRAN MAGAZINE: You served as casting director for Rio World during New York Fashion Week. You have also experienced firsthand how transformative inclusive casting can be. What did that experience mean to you, and what were you looking for when building the cast?

MAXWELL VICE: Rio World was my first real example of inclusive casting working. I was a young actor for a long time, and as someone who is Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese, I found it difficult to stand out in the modeling industry. Runways often want people who blend in.

When Rio booked me at 17, I saw myself in full makeup, wearing the complete look and gown, and looking like a model. I realized I could actually occupy that space. It wasn’t about needing a token mixed-race person. I was there because I was right for the job.

Almost 10 years later, when I returned as a casting director, I wanted to find that same authenticity. Rio is an incredible designer, and his team creates such beautiful work. The Indigenous identity, Blackness, and queerness expressed through the clothing are so vibrant that you need authentic people who can bring those qualities to life. It’s a marriage between the model and the design. Neither matters more than the other.

I don’t think about inclusive casting as a checklist. I think about the wow factor. The dark-skinned models we saw were gorgeous, and their walks were incredible. We could have built an entire show around them. The same was true of the light-skinned models, the bigger models, and the smaller models. There was so much talent.

We saw more than a thousand people during the casting process. For my first show as casting director, I wanted to find people who could undergo the biggest transformation between the casting room and the runway. I wanted entirely new faces. It wouldn’t have felt right to make my first casting as a director without discovering a new generation of talent.

That was important to me because Rio did that for me 10 years ago, and it changed my life. I didn’t see a place for myself in fashion. I was working professionally as an actor, and now, at 27, people primarily know me for my work in the fashion industry. That’s the power of casting that genuinely opens doors.

I hate even calling it inclusive casting. It sounds so stupid to me. It’s just casting. You know what I mean?

TRAN MAGAZINE: The industry often embraces queer aesthetics without necessarily creating meaningful opportunities for the people who shape those aesthetics. Having worked on both sides—as an artist and within fashion—where do you see the biggest disconnect?

MAXWELL VICE: It’s literally misogyny. At the root of it, I think the reason people have an affinity for queerness, or what they label as queerness, while keeping it confined to a box is misogyny and femmephobia. People don’t want to give feminine people, women, and the broader diaspora of women power.

I think about Fashion Week and being backstage in these rooms, surrounded by white gay cisgender men working on gowns, and I ask myself: Where are the dolls? Where are the lesbians? Where are the tea boys? Where are all the other people who contribute to this culture?

No shade, but we’re making garments for women with pussies and titties, and some of the people making those garments have never had to consider those bodies as their own. You don’t have to have both, but you should at least understand how one of them feels.

I remember working with Willy Chavarria and connecting with him on a deeper level because I was the only queer person in the room. After I walked the show, we talked, and I saw him open up when he saw my feminine side emerge rather than just my masculine presentation. I realized there was a layer of femininity we had to move through to reach a place of comfort and understanding.

The fashion industry doesn’t care enough about making people feel comfortable. At the end of the day, I think that when people learn to love women, feminine people, and the many identities within the diaspora of women, queer people will have fewer barriers to finding work. And I’m not just talking about fashion. I’m talking about politics, society, economics, and the justice system.

TRAN MAGAZINE: Your work as a photographer, DJ, casting director, and nightlife figure connects different creative communities. You have consistently built platforms for people who might otherwise be overlooked. How important is community building to your creative practice, and what has nightlife taught you about creating those spaces?

MAXWELL VICE: I learned that there might not always be someone looking for you, so sometimes you have to find yourself. That’s a strange thing to say because, when I was an actor, I always believed someone out there was looking for a talent like me. They were going to find me on the street, discover my headshot, and everything would work out.

It never did.

Eventually, I started showing up at fashion shows and audition castings myself. I would go into these spaces and think, “No, I’m going to sit here. If the director wants me to leave, I want them to come out and tell me to go home.”

It wasn’t about being combative. I genuinely felt that I belonged in those rooms, but I wasn’t being seen. If people weren’t looking for me, I had to get myself into the room.

My work with Ice Spice came from that same determination. People weren’t taking me seriously as a photographer or a fashion figure. They knew me as a theater kid and wondered why someone from Bushwick would be able to work in fashion. They assumed all I knew how to do was sing tenor and perform a little contemporary dance.

I made Ice Spice at 21, during a global pandemic, and I managed to build relationships with people like Willy Chavarria and major fashion houses before some of their current success. I see that as a result of putting myself in those rooms. I would track down Telfar and introduce myself: “Hi, this is who I am. I want to work. You weren’t looking for me, but this is what I bring to the table. You need me.”

That lesson carries into everything I do, whether it’s photography, DJing, casting, or nightlife. When I’m working the door at a club and a queer person comes up to me and says, “Listen, I don’t have any money, but I really want to be here. I feel like I’m supposed to be in this space. I just want to dance and have a good time,” I listen.

If I can see that they’re genuine and want to contribute to the atmosphere, the energy, and the community, how can I deny them that opportunity? I’m not saying I let everyone in for free. But if someone is showing me that they want to be part of something and contribute to it, that matters to me.

TRAN MAGAZINE: Fashion is constantly searching for what’s next, even though many of the people creating its culture have spent years working outside the industry’s traditional centers of power. When you look at the next generation of trans and gender-nonconforming creatives, what excites you most about what’s ahead?

TRAN MAGAZINE: What excites you most about the next generation of queer and gender-nonconforming creatives?

MAXWELL VICE: What excites me most is seeing the next generation of trendsetters and queer and gender-nonconforming people move beyond the conversation of identity so we can actually create. I feel like if people stopped making everything about being trans, being mixed race, how we were born, who we are now, or where we fit within the spectrum of sexuality, we could get somewhere. Bitch, once you get past who I am, you can actually get into the pot of art I’m making—what we’re cooking together. Then we can really make something happen.

I think about Pose, for example, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Dominique Jackson, and all the incredible talent that came out of that show. Imagine if transphobia within the entertainment industry hadn’t stood in the way of Black trans talent. Imagine how many more trans stars we could have today if these artists had been given the space and resources to thrive. The possibilities would be unmatched.

Again, it comes down to transphobia, femmephobia, and the way identity becomes the center of every conversation. People are so focused on defining us that they never get to experience what we actually have to offer. Unlike many people, queer and trans people are often forced to figure out who we are at an early age. That’s one of the real differences. Once we move beyond having to explain our identities, we can focus on the art, the creativity, and what we’re bringing into the world.