Fashion’s Favourite Rabbit is Named After Drag Race’s Latrice Royale

Named after RuPaul’s Drag Race season four’s very own Miss Congeniality, Latrice Royale, Alexander Fury’s Dutch Cross rabbit Latrice has much in common with his namesake. “Like that Latrice, mine is large and in charge, chunky yet funky, big bold and beautiful, honey,” says Fury. Latrice the rabbit also enjoys a moment in the spotlight: Fury met the weeks-old kitten – the name given to both baby cats and rabbits – on a photoshoot, and Latrice has since been shot by Sølve Sundsbø in Julia Nobis’ arms for LOVE and featured in Tatler alongside the cast of Made in Chelsea (“The shoot idea was to have an entire menagerie of pets, drawn from the staff of Condé Nast,” explains Fury, “but I was the only mug who actually turned up with anyone.”)

Fury didn’t have plans for a rabbit. “Latrice was an impulse purchase,” he says. “I was on a photoshoot with two rabbits borrowed from a pet shop, which were going to be returned at the end of the shoot. I ended up basically corralling Latrice, who was the gentler and quieter of the pair. At the end, I just took him home. The first night he slept next to my bed in a plastic crate.” Gentle and quiet he may have been to begin with, Latrice’s personality has evolved over the six years that the AnOther Magazine editor has since had him. Now, as he approaches middle age – in rabbit terms; “indoor rabbits (which he is) can live to be around 15 years old,” Fury clarifies – “quite macho”, “quite grumpy” and “afraid of feather dusters” are the terms used to describe him. Latrice is possessed of a brazen confidence too, apparently: “He is currently confined to rabbit coventry because he ate several lumps out of a Louis Vuitton coat I foolishly left downstairs and within paw’s reach.” Fury compares the coat post-Latrice to “one of those Vuitton bags Rei Kawakubo designed” in 2014, that featured gaping holes in each side.

Certain breeds of domestic rabbit can grow to the size of small dogs – the Flemish Giant or the French Lop, for example – and Latrice, as a Dutch Cross, is closer to that of a large cat. “Although at one point I was worried he was a breed named a Giant Checkered because he is quite enormous,” says Fury. “His ears are each roughly the length of a Mars Bar.” Latrice’s colouring is typical of his mongrel breed: he is covered in swathes of black and white fur, with black patches dominating around his eyes, nose and ears, in a pattern more unique than the recognisable shapes of black or grey around the face and body of the pedigree Dutch rabbit.

Fury explains that he “was told by the vet the [Latrice] was the poster-child for rabbit obesity”, and thus Latrice is on a diet. But, as the rabbit’s namesake once said, “being big is not an excuse for failure… it’s just not”.

With thanks to Sølve Sundsbø.