‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 15, Episode 5 recap: Turn this haus into a home

When Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote “A House Is Not a Home,” did they know that one day, 13 drag queens would prove that a house is the raw materials for a drag look?

In one of the best challenges we’ve seen in years, this week the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 queens are tasked with ripping apart home decor styled in three different ways—each inspired by one of Drag Race’s regular judges—and making outfits out of these unconventional materials. Five queens must go with animal print and black for Michelle Visage’s Jersey girl aesthetic; four more must be inspired by the tropical colours and mid-century modern flair of Ross Mathews’s beloved Palm Springs. The last four queens take inspiration from a “town and country” vibe … which I’ll admit doesn’t immediately make me think of Carson Kressley, but hey. You learn something new every day.

A design challenge means we’re only worried about the runway this week, and thank god for that. Instead of having to cram prep for a performance challenge, the performances and a runway all into one episode, we get to take our time in the creative process with the queens—including a Ru walkthrough!—and get plenty of time to view them all on the runway. The result is the best-paced episode of Season 15 since the premiere, and a window into what this show might look like when we get down to fewer queens. It’s still not an ideal format, but it’s an improvement.

Part of why this works so well is that the complexity of the challenge adds no extra time to the presentation. It’s an unconventional materials challenge, yes, but it’s also a collection challenge: the queens in each “fashion house” (fun pun!) must make sure all of their garments are cohesive. This ultimately doesn’t have any direct effect on judging, because all the groups do well at bringing their collections together. But it does push one particular queen’s look in another direction—and that leads to terrific results.

Let’s go group by group and break down the highlight looks. First up is House Visage, featuring Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Aura Mayari, Amethyst, Spice and Luxx Noir London. They originally try to go with a theme of royalty, but Ru shoots that down in their consultation with him. It’s a good thing, too: Michelle may be a queen, but with the prints and loud colours they have to work with, royalty would’ve been a tough swing. 

Most of the queens manage okay—although Spice apparently had a plan with Sugar for the latter to sew all the looks the former designs, and that obviously does not pan out—with the exception of two. Amethyst, already sewing-challenged, just doesn’t have enough to make her garment stand out. She styles it well; she really gets the Jersey vibe without doing too much. But the garment is mostly just fabric draped around her, and the judges do not take well to it. She lands in the bottom for a third time in four episodes, and it’s obvious her time on the show is drawing to a close.

The other queen thrown by the prompt change is Luxx, who had been really leaning into the royalty theme. Without it, she runs the risk of looking too different than the rest of her group—but she pivots, and produces one hell of a runway. We obviously don’t know what the other garment would’ve looked like in practice, but it’s hard to imagine it being any better than this. She drapes some gorgeous, shimmering purple fabric so perfectly that it practically floats behind her on the runway. Her blouse includes gold pieces at the top, to break up there being too much purple. And she sews a pretty flawless pair of zebra-stripe pants, effectively creating a new pattern out of them.

It’s a real home run for Luxx, and it puts her in a new echelon in this competition. While she’s done well all season, there hasn’t been a single breakout moment for her in the way we’ve seen for queens like Anetra, Sasha Colby and Loosey LaDuca. Now, her track record puts her right up there with Sasha in the frontrunner’s lane, and I have a feeling this is just the start for her. Certainly, in any kind of design challenge, you can pencil her in at the top: a future ball challenge champion, anyone?

We can mostly breeze through House Mathews—appropriate, considering they’re inspired by the breezy vibes of Palm Springs—but notably, two of the queens land in the top. Sasha gets in for a mega-hot swimsuit-and-wrap combo, while Malaysia Babydoll Foxx scores her first high placement for a look that guest judge Janelle Monáe describes as “First Lady of Palm Springs Baptist Church.” It’s a really fun look, but neither of these queens comes close to toppling Luxx for the win.

Something interesting happens with Malaysia when it comes to critiques, though. Malaysia tells the judges, after Janelle praises her sewing skills, that she’s never sewn a garment before. We’ve seen moments like this before, like when BenDeLaCreme admitted her premiere-winning outfit in Season 6 was made with “hot glue and desperation.” Usually, it’s edited as shocking, but in a positive way: how amazing that this queen did this with so little experience, is generally the tone.

This is not the case with Malaysia. The edit includes a surprisingly long pause, a look of skepticism from Jax (also up for critiques), and a “Really?” from RuPaul that sounds more skeptical than impressed. She then admits that she’s taken one sewing class before she came here—which, I’ve not taken a sewing class, so I’m not sure, but means she likely worked on some kind of project, if not a garment specifically. This is a very strange moment, and I’m wondering if it’s going to come up again in the future (or if it did in Untucked, which I’ll admit I did not watch). It’s an editing choice that draws attention to Malaysia’s claim, but when it comes time for decisions, Malaysia is the first of the four top queens to be called safe.

Theoretically, this could’ve been addressed during judges’ deliberations—but once again, those have been cut out of the episode entirely. So we’re left to wonder what exactly was intended, and hope that if it’s important, it’ll be addressed again soon.

The final group is House Kressley, and they produce both a top scorer (Robin Fierce, who finally places somewhere other than in the safe group) and two of the bottom three (Jax and Salina EsTitties). Jax’s look is actually quite cute, using the plaids to do a take on Heathers. The hair is a bad choice to pair with it, but for a design challenge, I think her work is more than safe. Salina, on the other hand, does far too much in her look, and only one element—a comforter cape of sorts—is really impressive technically. The garment under the cape is particularly messy, a term that Ru uses to describe Salina earlier in the episode.

Salina has been an interesting one so far: she’s so clearly a major personality that you can’t imagine she’ll just keep skating to safety, but she’s not been great in any of the challenges. In that way, it’s actually a benefit to her to have to lip sync this week, to Janelle’s “Q.U.E.E.N.” She tears up the dance floor against Amethyst, and gives an actual interpretation of the lyrics that doesn’t feel too on the nose or cheesy. It’s a clear victory for the Los Angeles-based queen.

And so we must bid adieu to Amethyst, who was really on borrowed time after surviving those first two lip syncs. If Ru decides that early that she’s not invested in what you’re doing, there’s just not much that can change the tide. Amethyst is a funny, enjoyable queen, but this is a tough group to stand out in if you’re not frequently excelling in the challenges. She just never found the room she needed to break out.

So! Final 12! It’s slowly starting to feel like a more manageable number. That said, we’re getting girl groups next week, which means we’re likely in for some very short verses—or a rushed episode around the performances. Counting down the days until the episodes start to feel as consistent as this one did again.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ The big “conflict” this episode, if one can even call it that, is that Spice implies in the cold open that Aura should be gone instead of Sugar. In the moment, Mistress tries to get her to say it, then Aura tries during the “it’s a new day in the werk room” bit, only for Ru to cut them off, and then Jax makes another attempt as the queens get ready at the mirror. Finally, Spice admits it in confessional, but Mistress thinks it’s silly that she won’t just say what’s obvious. “Lesson #1 for my future daughters,” she says in confessional. ”If you have a chance to read a bitch, read them down.”

✨ Speaking of Sugar and Spice: I didn’t watch last week’s Untucked, but apparently the twins were threatening to both leave if one of them was sent home? That is obviously ridiculous, but it’s still frustrating that a whole story beat about last week’s elimination wasn’t even mentioned on the show. Jokes about “only getting half the story” aside, a side-show that now airs a full hour after the main program should not be required viewing to understand what’s happening on Drag Race.

✨ Janelle Monáe makes for a terrific guest judge this week. She’s always going to give you sincerity—her serious, heartfelt thanks to Ru for having her is touching but awkward—but she also really gets into the groove when the runway show begins. She banters! She gives solid critique! She has a ball as the queens lip sync to her song! It’s a great turn from the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery star, and makes me all the sadder she didn’t get a deserved Oscar nom for that film.

✨ Somehow, with 13 queens left in the competition, this week marks the Reading Is Fundamental mini-challenge’s return. Some of my favourites include Luxx’s read of Marcia (“Marcia Marcia Marcia! You know, looking through your closet, it looks like you got everything from Marshalls Marshalls Marshalls!”), Sasha’s to Anetra (“Anetra, your name sounds like the insurance company Loosey had to call to pay for that shoddy facelift!”), and winner Loosey’s to Malaysia: “Miss Malaysia! I really think you should commit to the name ‘Malaysia’ and disappear like that flight.” With Snatch Game and reading challenge wins under her belt, Loosey is holding tight to the comedy queen crown this season.

✨ Janelle notes that Sasha tried and failed to reveal out of her wrap on her bathing suit, but Sasha finds a silver lining: “The universe said don’t show your ass on national television.”

✨ I mentioned it in the recap regarding Malaysia’s critiques, but I must echo: judges’ deliberations are not extra fat to cut out of the show. They are oft-necessary glimpses into how final decisions are made, especially regarding who will lip sync, and reveal what the judges think when the queens aren’t right in front of them. It is maddening that these are what we’re losing with these 42-minute edits, and I would implore the show to bring them back ASAP.

✨ May we all have the earned confidence of Luxx, who responds to Ru asking if she wants to add anything with, “Not really! I think I did a really good job, if I do say so myself!” Ru’s tickled laughter and Janelle’s applause are more than deserved.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, Feb. 3, at 8 p.m. EST on MTV in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday after new episodes for our recaps and power rankings, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.