He sends models down the runway in just tape. Meet the controversial Miami designer
by 
Hannah Nicole and Chelsea Puchino couldn’t wait to strip.
The Philadelphia-based models had nailed their auditions at the Civilian Hotel in Midtown Manhattan during New York Fashion Week in early September.
Both handily secured spots to walk in an upcoming runway show for The Black Tape Project by Miami’s own Drakhan Blackhart. They’d already worked with him before and knew the deal: They would not technically be wearing any clothes and were more than fine with that. The women just wanted a chance to work with the King of Tape again.
Born in West Kendall as Joel Alvarez, the controversial designer is known for strategically placing the household item onto catwalker’s bodies right there on stage, then sending them half naked down the runway.
This isn’t any run of the mill tape, like the kind in your drawer you use to wrap gifts. It’s medical-grade, meaning it’s non-toxic and doesn’t leave residue. Blackhart sells it by the roll in various colors, patterns and designs from $29.99 a pop.
“It’s liberating,” said Puchino, 29, of how it feels to be draped in this stuff. “And so cool.”
Nicole agreed that posing for Alvarez was a “badge of honor,” and loves how sexy — and confident — the sticky getup makes her feel.
“The material pulls you in, and accentuates your features,” the 25 year old explained. “You can really flaunt what you’ve got.”
READ MORE: See the King of Tape in action in his hometown of Miami
The burning question: What’s it like to have Blackhart so up in your trunk?
Both explained that the models themselves place the most intimate part of the attire, a patch, on their privates, first. After that order of business, the visionary begins painstakingly affixing the strips onto the landscape of flesh.
“It’s like a super tight bikini,” explained Puchino, who advises waiting to use the bathroom until the end of the shift.
“You feel a little uncomfortable,” admitted Nicole. “But you look hot.”
Hot? Most definitely. But Blackhart doesn’t see his so-called dragons as sex objects, rather as beautiful, living, breathing pieces of art.
“I created a genre, I was the first,” says the 42 year old, holding court while poring over his NYFW call sheet. “I’m the pioneer.”
A hidden nest egg
Blackhart hasn’t always been in this unusual racket. Back when he was just a local dude trying to make a few bucks, he had stints as a stilt walker, go-go dancer and bank employee. Briefly, the Southwest Miami Senior High alum hit a rough patch, living out of his Ford Focus.
READ MORE: The Black Tape Project hits NYC
In 2008, after his abuela’s death, Alvarez moved into her rundown home in Miami-Dade’s Westchester area and came upon a cigar box in his late grandfather’s closet. Tucked away in a bunch of envelopes was almost $27,000 in cash, a fortune for a 20 something kid.
After giving away some money to his family and friends, he paid for a new roof for the house, partied a little, and lastly, bought a camera with a “cheap lens.”
With his Canon Rebel XTI, Alvarez took pictures of motorcycles and cars, another passion of his, as a side hustle. He eventually moved on to snapping people, setting up camp at Hooters in Doral, where his then girlfriend was a server.
Through word of mouth, the photography gigs began to multiply, landing him spreads in Maxim and Playboy. One day, one of his subjects came to him with a roll of electrical tape and asked him to wrap her up.
He had no idea what he was doing.
“She looked like the Michelin Man who lost a fight with rubber band,” he famously wrote in his online bio.
Blackhart laughs now at the memory, because his unique expertise is now second nature.
“Once the subject is in front of me, I start to see lines in my head,” he says of the creative process. “I’ll apply the tape against the lines to complement the body as much as possible.”
For the next few years he’d occasionally tape dancers at nightclubs around town, in between projects abroad and gigs with celebs. The work, with such high-end clients as Rick Ross and Ciara, was steady, lucrative.
It was in 2017 during a charity event in Haiti when he went viral after wrapping Miss Puerto Rico Genesis Dávila in a metallic gold design he decided to try out on a fluke. The stunning beach photos blew up, receiving more than 10 million views overnight on Facebook.
That’s when the Internet sat up and paid attention. Alvarez’s inbox was flooded with invites for all the big shows, from Milan and Paris to L.A. and New York and, yes, his hometown.
“At first I was in shock because I didn’t know Facebook could work like that,” he recalls. “People were contacting me from everywhere, trying to book me. Business began picking up fast. ”
The 305 native had officially hit the big time, his provocative, adhesive outfits did all the right things: raised eyebrows, filled rooms and generated clicks.
‘Freak accident,’ then a reinvention
Just as his career was starting to heat up, Alvarez hit a stumbling block.
In 2022, while playing around doing gymnastics on a trampoline, Alvarez jumped wrong, and blew out both kneecaps.
“I was a cripple,” he says. “I was in a wheelchair. I couldn’t do anything for myself.”
The woman he was dating couldn’t handle the role of caretaker, and they split, which gutted him. Alvarez went to a dark place, at one point contemplating suicide.
“I had it all planned out wonderfully and told my mother,” he says of mapping out his own death. “I saw fear in her eyes for the first time ever, and this is such a strong woman. I realized then the only way to save Joel was to kill him off, and start fresh. ”
Alvarez pivoted into beast mode, relearning to walk, engaging in multiple types of physical therapies, and using the popular healing peptide, BPC 157.
Once his health improved, he set about changing his persona, installing Dracula-like fangs and lasering the brown color from his iris with a depigmentation procedure done in Spain. Look closely in the light, his eyes are an ethereal gray.
Oh, and that birth name. It had to go, too. He made up a bad-ass moniker: Drakhan, a riff on the word dragon, and Blackhart, because “his heart was closed.”
A few weeks before New York Fashion Week in February 2023, Alvarez shared cryptic posts about it being his “final appearance.”
Keeping the Madonna-worthy transformation a secret, he sat his ex in the front row. She watched as sinister music played and his solemn monologue went out over the speakers.
“A freak accident took both my legs from me,” he whispers eerily to the hushed audience. “And at the lowest point of my life I was abandoned and forgotten by this woman.”
A dragon roars in the background.
“It’s amazing how the body heals, but the mind is a completely different animal,” he continues. “Fixing a broken body with a broken heart is nearly impossible. I want to show you what I’m capable of when I focus all my pain and emotion into one direction.”
Announcing that Alvarez is “destroyed,” Drakhan dramatically rips off his leg braces, and hands them to his ex, who looks mortified.
Blackhart then debuts a new collection — symbolic body chains — and exits the building.
The King of Tape didn’t return for a bow or applause.
“That was it for Joel,” he says. “I was free and complete.”
