The vanity moment at NYC Pride 2026.
Why this year of Pride matters.
NYC Pride 2026 lands on June 28 — exactly 57 years to the day after the Stonewall Uprising. The parade route, the date, the institution itself trace back to that night.
At the center of that night, and of the gay liberation movement that followed, was Marsha P. Johnson — a Black trans woman, drag performer, activist, co-founder of STAR. Marsha fought for queer people to exist in every facet of life: public space, art, family, the makeup chair, the spotlight, the room. She is one of the people who made the queer existence we have today — including the queer beauty culture you've built into — possible at all.
In 2026, the rights Marsha fought for are under attack again. Over 700 anti-trans bills are active in state legislatures this session. Local Prides are being cancelled or defunded. The community Marsha built for is being asked, again, to defend its right to exist publicly.
NYC Pride 2026 is being shaped as a remembering of Marsha. Not a memorial — a continuation.
She & HER — built by who Marsha built for.
I'm Desirée Mayon — founder and CEO of She & HER, a sapphic-led tech company building digital infrastructure for sapphic community. I spent 15 years in product and data at Google, Microsoft, and Cambridge before founding She & HER. We're a partner of NYC Pride for 2026.
She & HER is built by sapphic women, for sapphic women — explicitly inclusive of trans queer women, in name, in product, in voice. We're building the digital infrastructure for the community Marsha built the public infrastructure for.
And we want Anastasia in the room with us — because there is no other mainstream beauty brand whose cultural placement in queer life lands the way yours does.
Anastasia is already in queer beauty culture.
A She & HER lounge at Stage Fest.
The middle space, made cinematic.
The middle space between the influencer red carpet (Go Magazine doing interviews) and the Red Bull–sponsored backstage. The natural gathering point of the day — where everyone passes through to rest, recharge, and touch up between the two adrenaline zones.
The vanity station is built for Anastasia:
- Couches, throw rugs, good lighting, fans, popsicles, shaded cover
- Full vanity setup — mirror, lighting, complete product lineup
- Setup window: 8–10am morning of, with storage at NYC Pride's office overnight
- Influencers, VIPs, press, performers, drag artists pass through all day
The product on the table is what people will use to get ready for the parade and the press. The shade chart of the Pride photographs that travel. The brow that's in the carousel of every queen who comes through. *Anastasia anchoring the room is a fully natural placement, not a forced one.*
Three options. You self-select.
If this lands, where it could go.
The Stage Fest lounge is the entry point. If it lands well — culturally, commercially, on your team — we'd love to expand the relationship into:
A co-produced editorial series running through Pride season — sapphic glamour, the work of getting ready, the lineage of queer beauty culture — featuring ABH artistry alongside She & HER's community-building. The kind of work that earns press without trying.
A 2027 extension — Disney Sapphic Day on National Lesbian Day 2027 is already confirmed for She & HER. UK Pride 2027 and Amsterdam Pride 2027 are also confirmed. The 2026 NYC moment is year zero of a multi-year footprint, and Anastasia could carry forward as a Founding Brand Partner across it.
This isn't a precondition. It's the next door if the first one opens well.
Meet Desirée.
"Marsha P. Johnson built the public infrastructure for queer community. We're building the digital one."
Desirée Mayon is a Black queer technologist who spent 15 years building production systems at Google (Fuchsia & Privacy & Security), Microsoft (Xbox), and Cambridge University (SupTech Lab) — shipping ML models, running $80M+ business lines, and building regulated data systems for cross-institutional research.
She founded She & HER to take that operator rigor and apply it to digital infrastructure sapphic community has been missing: a platform built by sapphic women, for sapphic women, explicitly inclusive of trans queer women. In name, in product, in voice.
The full-circle thesis isn't a metaphor. She's the kind of person the work Marsha started in 1969 was meant to make possible — and now she's the one carrying it forward in the language Marsha couldn't have built in: code, data, platform infrastructure, brand voice.
The next conversation.
What we'd love from Anastasia in the next two weeks: a 30-minute call between Desi and the right person on your brand partnerships or marketing team. The goal is alignment on which option fits — and a clear path to lock the vanity placement by early June so we can build the lounge with Anastasia in mind.
Decision timing: ideally by early June so the lounge buildout (signage, vanity, product placement, co-branded content) can be locked with two weeks of runway before June 28.
To set the call: reply to desiree@sheandher.io or forward this to the right person on your team — either route works.