Honey Dijon – The Trans DJ Redefining Music and Fashion
Honey Dijon is a Chicago-born DJ, producer, and transgender woman whose career sits at the intersection of underground house music and global fashion. She came up in the city that invented house, moved to New York, learned from elders, and built a passport life of art and music.
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South Side Beginnings and New York Move
Honey Dijon grew up on Chicago’s South Side, where house music was part of the air. As a teenager she found her way into clubs and within that scene met mentors who shaped her ear and her approach to DJing.
Chicago’s house tradition is communal and exacting; you learn to read a room, build a narrative, and respect the roots. Those lessons carried with her when she moved to New York in the 1990s, expanding her circle to include veteran DJs and label heads who encouraged her to produce and to treat club culture as serious work.
Later profiles and interviews identify Derrick Carter as a key early mentor and note friendships with figures like Frankie Knuckles, which placed her squarely in the lineage she often champions from the stage.
A 2013 New York Times style feature introduced her to a wider readership as “a fashion-forward DJ,” already moving between serious dance floors and fashion-week events. That dual fluency became a defining trait. She could close a warehouse and then soundtrack a runway without changing her core sound.
From Classic Music Company to Black Girl Magic
Dijon’s first album, The Best of Both Worlds (2017), arrived on the Classic Music Company label. Its guest list reads like a map of her community:
- Nomi Ruiz
- Joi Cardwell
- and Shaun J. Wright among others
The record moves between vocal house and tougher club cuts, reflecting a working DJ’s instinct for tracks that live beyond headphones and chart positions. The title nods to the life she has built between scenes and cities.
Her second album, Black Girl Magic (2022), deepened that blend. Released again through Classic, it features collaborators including:
It also landed during a year when she was prominent in the biggest pop conversation around—Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Between albums she has appeared on and remixed for other artists, kept a steady single schedule, and maintained a touring calendar that crosses continents.
If you follow club culture, you will see her name cycle through major festivals and respected residencies. The work is cumulative; it is how DJs become institutions.
Renaissance and Beyoncé
In 2022 Beyoncé released Renaissance, a study in house, disco, and ballroom histories. Dijon is credited as producer and songwriter on “COZY” and “ALIEN SUPERSTAR,” underscoring the album’s deep ties to Black, queer, and trans dance-music traditions.
For someone who spent decades telling crowds where this music comes from, being in the room for the biggest dance record in recent memory was both logical and rare. The credits sit alongside her own releases and remixes and widened her audience to listeners who may never set foot in a club.
She also contributed a remix to Beyoncé’s “BREAK MY SOUL” EP, situating her Chicago house vocabulary squarely inside the Pop-Industrial Complex and reinforcing why major artists call her when they want dance music that still feels like a room full of bodies.
Fashion and Entrepreneurship
Dijon is a fixture at the point where club culture meets fashion. For years she collaborated with Kim Jones—first at Louis Vuitton Menswear and then at Dior Men—creating or mixing show soundtracks that helped define Jones’s presentations. These weren’t one-off DJ bookings. They were long-term creative relationships that put her taste in front of the industry several times a year.
Her presence extended to the runway itself. In February 2022 she walked in Virgil Abloh’s final Off-White show in Paris, a tribute that brought friends and icons together to honor the late designer. For a DJ to appear among supermodels at a memorial-fashion event of that scale says something about how designers view her place in the culture.
In 2019 she launched Honey F*cking Dijon (HFD), a fashion label developed with Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. The brand started with:
- graphic tees
- leather record bags
- and DJ-adjacent accessories
then expanded with seasonal drops and art-collaboration capsules. The collection sits comfortably in CDG’s experimental retail ecosystem while staying true to club utility. It is fashion as a working DJ might design it: beautiful, useful, and built for movement.
She also fronted Calvin Klein’s global Pride campaign in 2021, appearing in images and a short film that framed personal history as part of modern queer and trans visibility.
Public voice and advocacy
Honey Dijon is direct about the politics of dance music. Articles and interviews document her insistence that the culture acknowledge its Black and queer originators and resist the industry’s tendency to smooth out history once a sound reaches mass markets.
She argues for inclusive lineups, for queer and trans visibility without apology, and for giving real decision-making power to people of color inside institutions. That stance shows up onstage, in brand collaborations, and in how she frames her own label: bring the community with you, and be precise about credit.
Because she is a transgender woman, her success in spaces that often erase trans people matters beyond any single booking. She treats visibility as an outcome of doing the job well rather than as a message on its own. The point is to make the room feel good and then, in the afterglow, help people see why the music felt like home.
Media and screen work
You will find Dijon across a scatter of documentaries and profiles about house and club culture. She turns up in broadcast and streaming pieces that frame disco and house as living histories. She is a frequent subject of fashion and culture magazines that view DJs as tastemakers.
The through-line is consistent: place her in a room where music meets image, and she will show you how the parts fit together.
Selected Collaborations and Credits
- Albums: The Best of Both Worlds (2017); Black Girl Magic (2022).
- Beyoncé: Producer and songwriter on “COZY” and “ALIEN SUPERSTAR”; official “BREAK MY SOUL” remix contributor.
- Fashion soundtracks: Multi-year collaboration with Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton and Dior Men.
- Runway: Walked in Off-White’s Fall/Winter 2022 Paris show honoring Virgil Abloh.
- Label: Founder of Honey Fucking Dijon with Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market.
- Campaigns: Calvin Klein Global Pride 2021.
A lot of culture talk treats “representation” as an abstract goal. Honey Dijon makes it specific. She is a transgender woman from Chicago’s house community who built a global career by being excellent where it counts: behind the decks, in the studio, and in rooms where music directs image.
She moves between underground credibility and luxury fashion without losing the thread of who the music is for. When you watch her close a runway, walk one, or show up in a blockbuster album’s liner notes, you are seeing a single argument play out: the people who built this culture should also lead it.
If her career gave you a clearer picture of Honey Dijon’s path, share it. Someone who loves dance music may need to see a transgender woman at the center of the story. Someone booking a festival or a fashion show may need a reminder that the best rooms happen when the right people are in charge of the sound.
Follow Honey Dijon
Stay connected Honey Dijon and support her journey by following her on social media and professional platforms:
- Website: Honey Dijon’s Official Website
- Facebook: @HoneyDijon
- Instagram: @honeydijon
- Youtube: @HoneyDijon
- TikTok: @djhoneydijon
