Diego Montoya

Early life and education Diego Montoya was born and raised in Lima, Peru. Later on, at the age of ten, his family immigrated to Miami, Florida, and settled down in the Little Haiti area. Montoya was introduced to the fashion world during his childhood through his grandmother, who was a dressmaker. He took an interest in fashion upon watching her sew intricate party dresses. In an interview with Vogue, he stated that at the time he wasn’t old enough to help with the pieces, but he would observe his grandmother’s work and hand items she needed. This exhibit opened on June 6, 2025, and it featured pieces by drag queens like Sasha Velour, Blair St. Clair, etc.

Installation art: late 2000s-mid 2010s In the late 2000s he was hired full-time designing window displays. He first attended MIXNYC in 2006 and got more networked and involved; he designed a t-shirt for the 2008 festival, staff uniforms for 2009, and was asked to design the space starting in 2010. He either staged his installations at home, where he had a sewing station, or had a temporary space. Montoya said of returning to his neighborhood, "Miami specifically is super-kitsch...It’s all pastel colors and neon, and that kind of playfulness is definitely in my work.” As of October 2018, Montoya has done art installations at Leslie-Lohman Museum, Abrons Arts Center, Same Art Museum, 29Rooms LA, and Art Basel Miami.

For the performance they created an “ornate and beautiful,” but "kinda scary" white dress she wore for the winning performance. Her ensemble included Montoya's tearaway and pearl “felt, lace, and hand-beaded mask held together by magnets that she cracked open like an egg to reveal her face.” According to MTV News, Velour's “more baroque, performance art-inspired drag that had long existed off the show” was put on equal footing with more popular “campy or Insta[gram]-glamorous” drag forms.

For Montoya, the finale outfit and performance brought in a “flood of requests” for his couture and increased his Instagram followers five-fold to over 10,000.

Further works, 2017-present Montoya has since collaborated with more Drag Race queens including: “Ongina, Kameron Michaels, Asia O’Hara, Eureka O’Hara, Monét X Change, Pearl, Jinkx Monsoon, Blair St. Clair, Bob the Drag Queen, Kim Chi, Aja, Honey Davenport, and Soju.”

In October 2018 jazz singer-composer and bassist Esperanza Spalding released 12 Little Spells, her seventh studio album, a twelve-part song cycle based on parts of the human anatomy. Each song was released on its own day, with a corresponding video; later she did a series of twelve pop-up concerts across the U.S. tied to each song. She collaborated with other artists on various aspects of the video and live performances, and commissioned Montoya to do a series of dresses for the effort; the live shows were filmed for a concert release. In it she revives a vaudeville-era conceit of something going wrong with the show, then having to go on with the show anyway—but with technology as the show is multimedia with live projection mapping. In the second act, Velour's story is about her transforming and maturing, she wears another bodysuit that ultimately helps her morph into a tree from her childhood. Velour stated, “all of the beautiful fabric choices, the way things move, and the way things sparkle in the light...those are the things that Diego is really passionate about, so he was able to improve upon my ideas in incredible ways.” Shangela is the first drag queen to walk the Oscar's red carpet, a long tradition for film stars, in drag; she was dressed in an “icy lilac mermaid gown with draped details and asymmetrical gold beading,” (seen here ). Montoya had ten days to make the dress, including five days of his team hand-beading. Shangela was a supporting actress in Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born (2018) alongside Willam Belli, and featured performers Cooper and Lady Gaga. In May 2019 Them noted his influences as “the kitsch, excess, and color of Miami, where he was raised after moving from Lima, Peru, as well as the drag queens and club kids he encountered growing up.”

In September 2019, Montoya's costumes were part of the world premiere of Joseph Keckler's Let Me Die, “a genre-bending performance” opera performed as part of Opera Philadelphia's O19 festival.

For their work in the HBO series We're Here, Montoya has won two Primetime Emmy Awards.