Jonathan Van Ness has a way of fixating on one's best—or at least one's most striking—feature. Where certain famous people can make you feel like you're the only person in a room, Van Ness has the ability to make one part of you feel singularly exalted—his gaze locks upon your hair, or beard, or eyes as if they were a domesticated unicorn's ivory horn. (To me, as soon as I opened the door to greet him: "Your eyebrows are amazing. Okay, I met you two seconds ago and already I'm sexualizing your eyebrows.")

This warp-speed positivity is Van Ness's superpower. Alas, to see in every hunk of rock or man meat the chiseled abs of Michelangelo's David can get pretty exhausting. "I like people too much, I really do. If their phone’s dead, I’ll be like, 'Let’s do a selfie on my camera,' and then it’s like, 'Oh, what’s your number?' and then it’s a whole thing. I gotta get, like, better at it."

But that X-ray vision for greatest potential, for a person's best self (the version that won't text him every day after scoring his number) explains why Van Ness is a natural fit for makeover television—especially makeover television in the crimson red South—where the Fab Five confront characters who don't all hold political views that, shall we say, demonstrate tolerance to under-eye creams and the men who use them.

"People who fundamentally disagree with you politically or socially are not bad people," Van Ness says. "I can’t expect that other side to have compassion for me if I can’t put myself in their shoes, too. But then I also want to bash my head in dealing with it sometimes. We’re all just trying to do the best we can with what we know!"

That perspective and his off-the-charts likability—not to mention a knack for sloganeering—could make him a terrific political candidate. Would he ever consider running for office? He laughed. "I feel like people will say, 'You were such a slut, you did so many drugs,' and I wouldn’t even get out of the primary because I have too many skeletons in the closet."

"But who doesn’t have a skeleton in her closet?" Hopefully, we'll be hearing a lot more from this bright light.

Elevated Moments

"So much of our lives and what we experience as emotions is chemicals in our brain. We’re so powerful. We don’t know how powerful we are. So if you’re really, really busy and you just do not have any time for yourself, if you just turn your phone off and go away from everyone—whether it’s mindfulness practice or just breathing or, well, I don’t think having a cigarette would be exactly the same, but it’s really breathing. People think it’s the chemicals in cigarettes, but it’s just they’re addicted to going and just having a moment by themselves."

Impulse Buys

"I went to Nordstrom and I saw this boot and I was like, I’m on a Netflix show! I can afford Jimmy Choo boots! It was actually originally like $1,100, but then she was like, $799, so I would actually be losing money if I didn’t buy these. Especially after wearing them for a year. It’s a bit of an elevated moment. I just don’t wear them to the salon, so they don’t get hair color on them. When I went to my first Fashion Week, I forgot that everyone was gonna, like, ask what I was wearing. This is literally what I was wearing—ready? I was wearing an ASOS jacket with a Margiela button-up, Good American skin-tight black jeans. But I’m like, honey, my shoe’s Saint Laurent, so. All about the high and low! I had like a $47 pant on with my $2,000 shoe and my $37 jacket."

Matching Monograms, De-Puffers, and Wrinkle Remover

"Netflix gave me this Dopp kit when we wrapped. We all have matching ones. We’re babies. We’re matching babies. It’s cute, right? This eye gel is really cool to the touch. It really de-puffs your bags. And that orange thing is like a travel pumpkin mask that I really like. It’s a really gentle resurfacer. It just kind of takes the shit off your face. After a flight, it’s nice. And the Kalahari face serum is really, really amazing. It really does make your lines relax. Your pillow lines in the morning. It does that naturally. There's no synthetic anything in it."

New York Dermatology Re-Contouring Eye Gel> $60, buy now at AmazonPeter Thomas Roth Pumpkin Enzyme Mask> $12, buy now at Peter Thomas RothRoyal Kalahari Face Serum> $90, buy now at SpringThe Power of a Moment

"If the end-all, be-all of self-care was going to a vacation in Hawaii where there’s no Wi-Fi, just being off the grid—you can create three minutes of that. You don’t have to go off the grid. You can give your brain those little opportunities to create whatever endorphin or serotonin it needs to get you through the day. When a client comes in to me with a picture of Jennifer Lawrence and says, 'I really want this hair,' I’m like, this is like a $15,000 look that you’re talking about. There’s ten packs of extensions here. Her colorist is $7,500 for a partial highlight. What can you do to start to get there without having to do so much? How can you get to a destination without spending everything to get there? It’s a moment—just getting that flavor without necessarily having to go so hard."

Selection Committee

"These sunglasses were the first free thing I got while doing Queer Eye, and I love them. I took a poll on my Insta story to see if I should get those ones or if I should get brown ones, but then I got the blue ones, and the poll said brown but I was like, ‘Go fuck yourselves.’ The blue’s so cute. Know what I mean? But I didn’t really tell my followers to go fuck themselves. I just…really wanted the blue ones, you know what I mean?"

Barton Perreira Bulger Sunglasses> $450, buy now at BarneysSemi-Precious Massager

"I use it to massage in my eye gel and face cream. It’s cold to the touch and helps to reduce puffiness and increase circulation. It’s great when you’re feeling a bit tired and need a facial pick-me-up moment."

Jade Roller> $10, buy now at Amazon

Fatigue Buster

"This is really good if you're tired. It’s really good for mature skin, but I use it because it’s really anti-aging and...I’m tired a lot."

Intelligent Nutrients Time Traveler Serum> $85, buy now at Amazon



Hot Tool

"You need a heat tool to polish your hair off a little bit. I started growing my hair out when I was like 22, 23. I just stopped cutting it. Then I got it really long, and I cut it really short in 2012. I was 25 then, and I’ve never had it short again. I was like, Oh my god, I love my long hair. Maybe someday I will cut it off. You can’t be predictable, girl! I don’t use a flatiron every day, but I do use it a lot. At the gym, they’ll have a blowdryer, so I use that as a tool to get my ends not looking like hell. The flatiron’s cute and it has a really good temperature gauge, so you don’t have to go at your hair too hard. And it can also be a curling iron—it does both."

BaBylissPRO Nano Titanium Prima3000 Hair Tool> $180, buy now at Amazon



Binge Console

"There’s ground-up weed on my iPad, because I fall asleep watching Broad City on it every night. I love Fleabag, and just got re-obsessed with Downton Abbey. I’m rewatching season one and freaking out for it. I’m also in withdrawal from Great British Bake Off, so I’m really into Nailed It. Even if I didn’t work for Netflix, I’d be obsessed with them. But Nicole Byer—she’s my really good friend—is hosting this really cute baking show where they make really bad baked goods. Well, they're not really bad, but they’re really hard desserts. It would be like me trying to make it, like if Helen Keller got loose in the kitchen."

iPad Pro> $649, buy now at AppleTravel Bag

"I love it because it’s durable, and it's made really well. It's chic but with a twist."

M0851 BP 25 Computer Backpack> $815, buy now at M0851



Quick Dry

"I like a tank. I don’t like to have a bunch of fabric on my skin when I’m working out. Also, if you’re throwing your clothes in one of those plastic bags, I’d rather have less weight and wet stuff. I like Dri-Fit because she gets dry really quickly, which is nice. I pack my gym bag the night before. I lift weights and I do a lot of yoga. I work out a lot!"

Nike Dry Miler Running Tank> $30, buy now at ZapposGym Tunes

"I just like the red ones. There’s something about them that sticks to my head better. I’m really into SZA, Dua Lipa. And the Dixie Chicks' greatest hits. That never changes—they’re always a constant. OMG, and Lizzo. Lizzo’s the shit. Really good."

Beats On-Ear Headphones> $90, buy now at AmazonJet Scent

"This is the only fragrance that I wear. The creator is so fucking hot and he’s straight, and I’m devastated about it. He just, like, knows scents, honey. And I think they have really good ingredients. I don’t get headache-y from it. With my psoriasis, I will like flare out into red patches all over my skin so fast, it makes your head spin, it’s crazy. And theirs just doesn’t do that to me."

Byredo “Blanche” Eau de Parfum> $230, buy now at Barneys

Wednesday Fun Day

"My co-hosts and I are very mewy-mewy in touch. When I’m in New York, Antoni and I pal around on Wednesdays. We meet at the gym at 9 A.M., usually Bond Street. We work out, then we get lunch, and then we have to do a little impulse shopping. But sometimes, if I’ve already done too much damage impulse shopping, we’ll go to the museum and he’ll teach me something interesting about art. The last time, we went to the Met and saw the Hockney thing, which was really, really good, and we got in trouble for doing an Insta story there. The guy thought I deleted it, but I diiiidn’t. I was like, 'Get away from me, girl.' By then I’m usually hankering for a little bite, but Antoni is like, 'We have to get back to Brooklyn before it gets crazy,' and then we go to Brooklyn and his boyfriend comes home, and we Postmates a lot of food, and I usually end up falling asleep on his couch by 8 or 8:30. Then they get me a Via for $12 because he’s obsessed with Via instead of Uber or Lyft, and then I go home. We do that every Wednesday. We have to do that every Wednesday or else I’ll freak out."

The Queer Eye Magic

"I think you don’t have to go to that extreme of redoing your house or redoing your wardrobe. You can definitely break those verticals down into incremental things. There is a startling amount of change that you can do by committing three minutes of thought to it, whether that’s planning out your shopping list for that night at the grocery store or, like, 'OMG, I’m gonna AmazonFresh some groceries to try a different thing,' or 'I’m gonna Amazon Prime an eye cream that I read about.' One teeny thing can build you toward the right thing."

Grooming by Jennifer Brent for Exclusive Artists Management

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