You know a RuPaul’s Drag Race UK contestant has made an impact when the BBC is forced to issue a plea for kindness among the show’s fans. Dakota Schiffer, the charming doll of series four, was unceremoniously booted from the competition last week – at the hands of Michelle Visage no less, in RuPaul’s mysterious, unexplained absence – and her elimination was acutely felt throughout social media. As Schiffer herself tweeted, “Michelle Visage’s Drag Race has fucked up drag.”

“It’s hard knowing that I feel like I did a really good job and the judges just didn’t get me,” she tells me a day after her exit from the series. Clad in a characteristically chic flower power ensemble, she says she’s still “digesting” her elimination. “I’m grateful that I’ve come across well, I was myself the entire moment, and I didn’t let any of the critiques compromise that.”

In recent years, Drag Race has proven to be a fertile breeding ground for future fashion darlings. Back in 2015, designers like Moschino and Richard Quinn quickly latched onto Violet Chachki’s 19” waist and kickstarted a Drag Race-to-runway pipeline that has since seen other US queens like Aquaria, Symone and Gottmik pass through. Four series of Drag Race UK down the line and we’re starting to see a similar pattern in the UK – first, there was Bimini, who has been featured in Vogue Italia, GQ and Interview. And now,…