Some may recognize Amanda Thomas as the face from the ‘Pygmalion’ ballet posters scattered across campus; it’s her eccentric eye makeup and 40s vintage style that make her intriguing.
Dressed in an outfit reminiscent of a Jackie-O snow queen, Thomas, a senior double-majoring in dance and theater, pairs her self-made faux fur pillbox hat and matching faux fur removable collar with a Chanel-inspired suit jacket.
‘Driving up here, I saw some snow on the ground, so now I’m longing for a white landscape,’ she explained.
From the ages of 10 to 18, Thomas’ only form of institutional education was at the Munson Williams Procter Arts Institute in Utica, N.Y., where she studied dance. As an English teacher, her mother chose to home-school Amanda and her identical twin sister Alison so they could focus on dancing. As a transfer student in her second semester of senior year at Binghamton University, Thomas is only 19 years old.
‘Since I can remember, I’ve always had an artistic eye,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ve wanted to put my thoughts about the world into a way that others could see by expressing myself.’
Originally, Thomas felt that she was able to do this through dance. Unfortunately though, the strict appearance requirements got in the way.
‘Everyone had to wear their hair back very tightly, the exact same makeup, and the same color leotards,’ she said. ‘There was no way to stand out.’
In addition to her ballet training, her mother would dress her and her sister in identical outfits so it was almost impossible to tell them apart. It was in Thomas’ early teens that she really began experimenting with makeup as a medium for standing out.
‘I have always been very influenced by color and visual things and it’s a different way of putting color, shape and line together,’ Thomas explained.
Her sister Alison Thomas, a senior majoring in English, said that her sister ‘basically took her stage makeup to the street.’
Most of Amanda Thomas’ inspiration comes from nature, a medium through which she channels colors into her eyelids.
‘I generally put on my makeup first, then choose an outfit to match,’ she said.
Thomas likes to wear as many colors on her eyelids as she can. In addition to shading, she draws lines and dots to incorporate more colors.
‘It gives people a little more to look at,’ she said. ‘The lines and dots make my eyes happy, so other people’s eyes will be happy too.’
For her Jackie-O-inspired outfit, she combined powder blue and glow green as the base and then a purple line on top and turquoise lines on the side. Her outfit and eye makeup gracefully combine both halves of the influential decade together.
Thomas describes her eyelids as an ‘Andy Warhol Jackie-O painting. The shapes and colors are very 60s.’
Wearing makeup as elaborate as Thomas on a daily basis can be a very high-maintenance task. But those who feel self-expression is as important as she does will make the effort. She encourages those who already do and criticizes those that don’t.
‘People who express themselves through clothing and makeup should not back down from it,’ she said. ‘Our culture is obsessed with fitting in and comfort.’