Birthday Dinner is a new Hypebeast series that explores how influential individuals in our space are approaching their next year of life. Ahead of the special day, each subject divulges all the stories that shaped who they were, who they are and who they would like to be next.
An infectious chuckle echoes through The Arlo Williamsburg’s scaling elevator shaft, alerting those waiting inside the hotel’s top-floor Water Tower Bar of who exactly the lift’s double doors are about to reveal. In one-two step with the hoist’s bell, two fluffy stilettos click into the venue, followed by a feather-crowned purse, a silver L-shaped belt, face-shielding turtle sunglasses and a bold-shouldered leather coat — all products of New York’s buzzy fashion label Luar. “Hiiii,” their happy wearer exclaims, extending an embrace with silver-encrusted, deep-green acrylic nails and a quick shuffle.
Honey Balenciaga has entered the building.
“The Voguing Diva,” also known as Honey Gonzales (her given last name), is here to celebrate her birthday. She’s duckwalking off a year of highs, including dipping (a ground-level vogue stunt) 90 times as a breakout dancer on Beyoncé's ballroom-inspired Renaissance World Tour, dropping her first visual album, securing her inaugural magazine cover and, most recently, wrapping production on an unannounced Netflix show, in which she stars as herself. Yet, standing before The Water Tower’s gargantuan windows and overlooking the cloudy Manhattan skyline, the five-foot-two (sans heels) starlet appears refreshingly demure, even if her audacious ensemble might want to convince you otherwise. More impressive, though, is the fact that she’s only turning 23.
“I never got to celebrate my birthday before,” she says, taking a seat on a velvet green sofa for dinner. The statement is quite surprising coming from someone famous for being a ball; however, her reason for skipping out on her own parties is rather indicative of why nearly half a million social media followers on Instagram alone know her name. “Last year, I was on tour with Beyoncé, so I couldn’t really do anything. The year before that, I was working and traveling,” she explains. “This is the first time I’m really celebrating my steps into adulthood … can I have a lemon drop martini, please?”
“I want to do everything. Music, modeling, dancing, singing, acting. I cannot keep myself inside of one box.”
Honey’s birthday is August 15, making her a Leo, the fifth sign of the zodiac known for being confident, ambitious, dominant, creative and loyal. “I’m definitely a fabulous fiery Leo,” she confirms, sipping the citrus cocktail. “But any real Leo would say that.” Her birthday horoscope, presented to her at the table, articulates just how her flame flickers differently from her fellow fire signs:
“You have cleverness and versatility, allowing you to understand just about anything. Yours is a youthful spirit with a mischievous streak, not only in youth but throughout life. As intelligent as you are, you see so many possible paths to take that it can be challenging to focus on just one.”
“This is so me,” she laughs, concealing her face with the slip of paper as if she’s just been read. “I want to do everything. Music, modeling, dancing, singing, acting. I cannot keep myself inside of one box.” In fact, for as long as Honey can remember, she’s never been able to contain her creative pursuits to just one talent, especially while cultivating all of them as a “flamboyant and bold” kid in New York City.
To set the record straight, Honey was born in the Bronx, raised in Brooklyn, schooled in Queens and trained (mostly) in Manhattan, so she’s about as well-versed as New Yorkers come. Growing up with a Nuyorican mother and a Honduran immigrant father, who struggled to find work without citizenship, Honey was not granted the luxuries of the city’s expensive arts institutions. Instead, she remembers discovering her love for acting through her public school’s theater program, where she starred as Simba in The Lion King, and her passion for dance through a neighboring studio called Dance Atlantic, where she picked up ballet, tap, jazz, salsa, acro and more styles in free classes.
“I learned all these different techniques, but nothing was clicking for me just yet,” she recalls. “So, I went to Manhattan and began training at another free dance program called The Door.” Situated on the outskirts of SoHo, the creative youth development center hosted a vogue class every Friday, during which a 15-year-old Honey would march to Pier 46 alongside a legion of new, experienced, young and old ballroom members to cultivate her now-famous craft. “It changed my life,” she puts it simply.
“If you don't believe you're famous, if you don't believe you're that good, if you don't exude that confidence, no one is going to believe it for you."
But more immediate matters now arise. “I’m hungry,” she says. As if on cue, the first course — celery root latke topped with horseradish and a generous sprinkle of chives, alongside the daily focaccia, served with salty chive butter — arrives at the table, straight from chef Michael King’s Sungold restaurant on the ground floor.
“As I was saying, I was always delusional,” she continues, forking her appetizers while sharing her secret code for attracting the limelight. “If you don't believe you're famous, if you don't believe you're that good, if you don't exude that confidence, no one is going to believe it for you. So I just took that energy with me everywhere I went.” Channeling her self-granted star power, she explains she quickly earned her peers’ respect by performing stunts, tricks and dips that the older girls — her “mothers” — often called “sweet like honey;” hence, her performance name (which will soon become her legal one, too) stuck.
She also gained more confidence learning to embrace her queer identity as a young adult battling gender and body dysphoria, thanks to voguing’s strong support systems. In 2017, she joined the House of LaBeija, one of many kinships within the ballroom scene; and shortly after, she moved to the Houses of Juicy Couture and Balenciaga, two more familial ballroom clans inspired by mainstream fashion labels, the latter of which gave her the surname she’s most famous for today.
“I took every moment that I had at the ball, and I branded it,” she recalls of how she was able to rise to the top in such a short amount of time. “All of my outfits referenced looks on high fashion runways, and it was always about exuding that confidence.” Every time she performed at a ball, she posted videos on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and people unaffiliated with the community began learning her name over the following years.
Her viral videos helped her stick out in the algorithm when Beyoncé’s choreographers were selecting the voguing vixens to audition for the Renaissance tour. A prominent role on Max’s Legendary, a ballroom competition show that saw the scene’s houses go up against each other America’s Got Talent style in 2022, definitely didn’t harm her chances either. And she would later learn that Beyoncé’s daughter Rumi and her cousin Rainy were fans of hers all along. Nonetheless, there was no way she would have been prepared to receive the pinch-me DM to try out for one of the world’s biggest superstars at the barely-legal age of 21.
“It’s f*cking Beyoncé. I’m going to go the extra mile.”
It was the middle of New York Fashion Week, and Honey was in her childhood bedroom with her best friend Barbie when she received a message from the tour’s choreography team: “We need you in LA tomorrow. We have an audition for the Renaissance tour.” “I have to go immediately,” she told Barbie. In practically a blink, she was in the studio, where there were three rooms: one for girls, one for boys and one exclusively for voguers. Somehow, she learned — and executed — all three parts. “It’s f*cking Beyoncé. I’m going to go the extra mile.” Unsurprisingly, she booked the tour; and only a few days later, she was in rehearsals. “I was extra,” she chuckles. “But it worked.”
Honey debuted on the Renaissance World Tour’s opening night in Stockholm on May 10, 2023. “Stepping on that stage felt like a dream come true,” she remembers. “It almost felt like déja vu, as if I had experienced this moment before and that it was meant to happen.” She admittedly blacked out, taking in the euphoric sensation of tens of thousands of people cheering as she performed her now-iconic crawl down the center of the runway, spinning and twirling among her fellow dancers before dipping at the feet of Beyoncé herself, for the first time. “What the f*ck did I just do? What happened? Did I land it? Was it good?” she immediately asked everyone backstage. It was so good, in fact, “Honey Balenciaga” was the number-two trending topic on Twitter shortly afterward. “I stayed up all night, just flabbergasted that this is my life. Adrenaline is wild.”
Throughout the 56-stop tour, Honey crawled, spun and dipped into a significantly brighter spotlight, one that Beyoncé helped her navigate. “One of the conversations that we had went back to the idea of how many people can say bad things about you,” Honey says.”Beyoncé reminded me to look at how many people are screaming your name. Look at how many people love who you are. Look at how many people look up to you. Those are the people that you fight for.”
With the tour wrapped, Honey feels that she’s accomplished what she wanted to in the world of voguing, and she admits that she’s a little tired of feeling limited by the dance style. “Honey is the voguing diva, yes,” she explains. “But Honey is also the model, the actress, the fashion designer. I put those other things on pause to go on tour with the biggest artist in the world. Now, it’s time to branch out.”
"F*ck it, I’ll just tell you. I’m releasing my own collection of heels.”
While eyeing her next act, the meal’s second course comes into focus: bucatini, dressed with tomato confit, basil, aged parmesan and chile breadcrumbs, alongside the restaurant's signature Second Street Burger with crispy onions, deluxe sauce and fries. Swirling her fork in the pasta, Honey asks, “When does this story go live? F*ck it, I’ll just tell you. I’m releasing my own collection of heels.”
Marking her first foray into fashion design, the line is specifically designed for dancers like herself. “After tearing my ACL, I realized that a custom heel catered to keeping the body safe is so necessary. And when you think of me, you see a stiletto. So, I thought why not create the stilettos that I want to wear?”
Her move into the fashion sphere almost mirrors that of Luar designer Raul Lopez, who also got his start in the ballroom scene and whose designs powered Honey’s grand entrance to this dinner. Honey says she recently sat down with Lopez for dinner, and while she recounts their conversations of old ballroom tales and fashion week stories, it’s the ideal time to pass her a birthday card that Lopez personally prepared ahead of this sit-down:
Dear Honey,
As I think about your recent growth, I am filled with immense pride. I reflect on my daughta’s [sic] incredible journey and the remarkable accomplishments that you reached at such a young age.
Your extraordinary talent, the dedication to your craft, your preserverance and your impact on the ballroom scene continues to inspire and uplift so many. You've set a standard that is truly unmatched. When people see you vogue, young or old, they feel inspired, they feel joy, and I am so happy that you’ve stayed humble, but more importantly tru [sic] to you, throughout it all.
May this year bring you even more opportunities to shine and make your mark on the world.
Love you,
Raul Lopez
“I’m keeping this,” she says, staring at the card with emotional eyes. “Raul is Ma. It means a lot to me that we have this connection. It’s funny because not many people know that he actually comes from ballroom, so out of respect for all of the knowledge that he has, he is Mother.” She plans on bringing her designs to him “sooner or later,” citing his opinion as among the most valuable and respected in New York’s fashion scene right now. He did somehow convince Beyoncé to come to Bushwick for his show in February, after all. “If Raul can do it, why can’t I?”
A fruit-topped chocolate cake, labeled with “Happy Birthday” icing and poked with a sparkler, slides onto the table as the meal’s closing act.
Now, Honey faces one last question: What are you wishing for?
At first, she’s hesitant to respond. But as the fiery sparkler blazes before her, inspiration strikes: “I wish for continued blessings and new love. I love love…I need a man,” she concludes, followed by the same cheeky laughter that signaled her arrival. It’s clear that she wants to have some fun amid all the wild turns involved in being and becoming Honey — Balenciaga, Gonzales and all of her future iterations.
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