“40 minutes? You want to maybe reduce a lifetime of struggle, and art, and sex and music and fashion into 40 minutes?!” An indisputable force of nature, trying to bottle the essence of Honey Dijon in a single podcast episode is almost a moot task – but for the final episode of i-Dentity, we tried our very best.

Easily one of the most in-demand DJs and producers of our time, Honey’s story started in Chicago where she grew up in a household of music lovers. From Aretha Franklin to Donna Summer, the Isley Brothers to Earth, Wind and Fire, the foundations for Honey’s sonic eclecticism were laid early on. By her early teens, she was already exhibiting an instinctual knack for selecting. Her parents would “let me play records at their basement parties before I went to bed,” she reminisces.

It was at the age of 13 that she first stepped into her hometown’s burgeoning house music scene, then the preserve of the city’s queer, POC communities and taking place predominantly outside of the institutionalised club scene. “These parties took places in places like juice bars and, earlier on, in high school auditorium,” Honey says. “There was no alcohol, so it wasn't policed.” It was around the same time that her lifelong enthusiasm for fashion was sparked, in large part because of her uncle, a tailor: “My father used to bring me along with him when he had things made or altered, and my uncle had all the latest fashion magazines, laying around the house.”

This tandem immersion in music and fashion was indeed fortuitous, but it was upon her full-tilt immersion into her hometown’s scene that she came to recognise the instinctual parallels between the two. In Chicago’s booming, queer and POC-driven house music scene, fashion served as a means to declare an affiliation with a particular tribe. “One of the ways people would dress was very new wave – blazer with safety pins and badges, and then a lot of kids would have mohawks,” Honey recalls. “Then you had the punk-out kids, and then you had the high fashion kids, who’d come in wearing Claude Montana, Willi Wear, Vivienne Westwood, Gianni Versace, Gianfranco Ferré…” So where did Honey fit into this? “Well, when I was a kid, I was drawing a lot of inspiration from the streets of London, or what I saw of it through magazines. I used to go to the Salvation Army and try to emulate what Gaultier was doing. A big aviator or motorcycle jacket, some loafers, white socks, cropped jeans, and a sleeveless t-shirt and some of my favourite band badges… I could put all of that together for a couple of dollars!”

Though Chicago may be the city that incubated Honey’s aesthetic instincts in all the disciplines she now works across, it was in New York – the city she moved to in the late 90s – that she truly came of age. “I was a caterpillar before I came to New York, but it was there that I became a butterfly,” Honey says, noting the hardiness and grit that the city instilled in her. “In the words of TS Madison, ‘You have to step your pussy up in New York City!’ New York does not fucking play. Everyone's beautiful. Everyone has a big dick. Everyone has big boobs – you're replaceable, you're disposable. It really teaches you how to hustle.”

For Honey, much of the hustle came down to figuring out how to navigate New York’s musically siloed club scene, a stark contrast to the sonic borderlessness of her hometown. “I wasn't hearing music presented in the way it was in Chicago. New York, for me, was very segregated musically; you had the soulful house parties, big room, tribal clubs, underground New Wave parties, techno parties…. but each place had a specific sound and that sound was heard the entire night,” she recalls. “In Chicago, DJ sets were eclectic – they were about storytelling – but that wasn't happening in New York.” In charting her path through the scene, playing parties as far-ranging as circuit-y gay functions and historic house venues, she encountered resistance towards the expansive, crate-digging style she’s now acclaimed for. “When I started DJing white gay clubs, people would come up to the booth and be like, ‘Oh, you don't have the latest Britney Spears remix?’,” Honey laughs. “At one point, the gay clubs didn't want to hire me because I wasn't gay enough, and the bigger house clubs didn’t either because, in their eyes, I was ‘too gay’, whatever that means.

“I struggled a lot,” she continues. “And I was misunderstood, because I wasn't playing one genre of music the entire night. People used to say, ‘We don't know which Honey Dijon is going to show up tonight!’ And now that's what I get fucking paid to do!”

Beyond the artistic versatility, flexibility and perseverance that her time in New York instilled in her, the city also proved pivotal in facilitating Honey’s journey towards discovering and embracing her own identity. “It’s a place where my community of trans sisters revealed me to me. Growing up in Chicago, there were very few mirrors of affirmation when it comes to trans women,” she says, recalling the pivotal role that discovering drag and experimenting with her gender expression played in guiding her towards her eventual transition. 

Today, Honey is one of the most visible Black trans women in contemporary culture. Much more than that, she’s one of the world’s most esteemed, in-demand DJs and producers, working with the likes of Beyoncé, Madonna and Dior Men’s creative director Kim Jones, who she counts as an old friend. Still, she’s conscious of the optical value that her position holds and the progress it is an indication of. “I always think of what Laverne Cox said: ‘I don't ever want to be a role model – I want to be a real possibility’,” Honey says. That really resonated with me because I didn't have any of that – I didn't ever see myself reflected. I call it a mirror of affirmation. You can't be what you can't see. And I'd never seen another trans woman of colour as a tastemaker that’s given due credit. The first person to break that mould for me was Connie Fleming walking for Vivienne Westwood and Mugler. For me, it's more important for trans women of colour to take up space. I want to see trans women of colour as designers, photographers, stylists, musicians, editors, festival promoters… there's so much more work that needs to be done.” 

And so, for the finale of this season of i-Dentity, discussing everything from growing up in the Chicago house scene, how New York made her hardcore, why trans visibility isn’t enough on its own, and her own definition of “style”, we have the honour of presenting Honey Dijon.