Genesis Webb hardly sleeps these days. The 26-year-old, who is best known for her work as Chappell Roan’s stylist, is Zooming in from a garage in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, which she has converted into a bedroom-cum-workspace. The backside of the garage door is plastered with magazine pages, mood boards, and photographs, like a peek inside Webb’s mind. (With her long black hair, bleached eyebrows, and throat tattoo, Webb is right at home in the dimly lit gothic tableau.) Despite the questionable legality of her setup, she is delighted by her space. “I don’t sleep very much or very well, so when I do, I need full shutout, black, no noise, just very dungeon-esque,” she says.
Given her strong sense of aesthetic, it’s no wonder that Webb found her first taste of fame on Tumblr. “I got weirdly popular on Tumblr when I was 14. I just knew what to do,” she says. It was on the platform where she tapped into the culture and films that have inspired some of Chappell Roan’s looks—from the drag queen Divine in Pink Flamingos to the film Party Monster. “I started selling thrifted clothes in 2014, and I made that a career. Within a year or two I was fully freelance, and then I started a jewelry brand from that,” she says.
After ending a bad relationship, Webb left a yearlong cross-country roadtrip with her ex for Los Angeles in February 2020, where—in the midst of the pandemic—she quickly found herself isolated and out of money. “I moved to LA alone and the whole world shut down within a month. I was on my last leg of money, fully in credit card debt, and I was like, I have to pivot,” she says. Thanks to her innate sense of style and knowledge of fashion she acquired from thrifting, many people had encouraged Webb to become a stylist. “One day I closed all the other doors and I was just like, I’m doing this. I followed every stylist in the world on Instagram, and then I had my first job within [a] week with Davey Sutton.” A month later, she was on set with Lady Gaga, assisting Nicola Formichetti.
Webb was born in Phoenix and moved around as a kid, though she considers Oklahoma City home. (“My mom just liked to move,” she says.) It’s that Midwestern sensibility that helped her connect with Missouri native Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, better known by her alter ego, Chappell Roan. Or, as Webb puts it: “The trashiness is there with us.” She and Amstutz first met on set for an editorial Formichetti was styling; the two connected over their shared interest in vintage, thrifting, and their Midwestern roots. One week later, Webb officially joined the team as Chappell Roan’s stylist.
Webb and Amstutz have challenged each other to think beyond their personal tastes. “She obviously loves drag and comes from a more glam drag background, where I loved the club kid scene. Coming from a punk scene is just a little harsher,” Webb says. “She taught me just that glam and color and glitter can be just as avant garde and just as high fashion as anything.” Webb originally dreamt up a much punkier vision for Chappell Roan, but seeing her perform live begot a change of heart. “The first time I ever saw her perform at the Wiltern in LA, after I’d already done a tour,” she says. “It was so important for me to see a couple thousand people in full dress-up costume to go and hang out in a very queer space together and watch someone that gives their all for the performance and then also cultivates the space of safety.”
Lucienne Nghiem
Lucienne Nghiem
It’s that tension of opposing aesthetics that’s lead to some of the duo’s most recognizable work. For Chappell Roan’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert, the singer wore a saccharine fuchsia Betsey Johnson dress with a red beehive wig, which Webb festooned with cigarette butts. “At 6:00 a.m. at the hotel, I was outside like a gremlin, lighting Marlboro Reds, just chain smoking,” she says.