Makeup is a very personal thing. We can use it to enhance a feature we like, to hide something we don´t want people to see, to express our identity or it can be part of our religion. Makeup can be a way to disguise, to mislead and to show and point out. It can be pure and clean and bold and dirty. Makeup offers us the chance to change our outerself to express our innerself, its an artform. It might be a daily mood you want to show, or you might want to create an avatar of yourself or you might want to dive into the world of drag. With this series we want to celebrate makeup and embrace it in all its shades by inviting makeup artists to share their art with our readers
and to show how to do it.
Behind-the-scenes photos and the “how to do” video by Catalina Jaramillo
Featured artist 420bombshell
Interview Leticia Lima
Special thanks to Antonia Rosa
Makeup is a stroke of empowerment, unlocks inner confidence and personal expression. It transforms faces into art, boosting the spirit and sparking joy. In addition to beauty, it celebrates individuality and creates a vibrant world where dreams come to life. “Makeup with ZOOT” is the art of self-love and inspiration, revealing the beauty that exists within all of us. The artist we have chosen and the ones we will be choosing are the living showcase of this testament.
Pedro aka Bombshell was born an artist. Everything for him is easy and with the little he does, he does a lot. I love his imagination and his extraordinary creativity. This is all about Pedro Sacramentos´s transformation into his alter ego 420bombshell.
– Antonia Rosa, ZOOT beauty editor
ZOOT: What is your pronoun?
420bombshell: She if I’m in drag and they out of drag.
ZOOT: Can you tell us a little about the make-up you did today and what you want to express with it?
420bombshell: I like to use materials from daily life that I can transform in my own way, and I also like to try new techniques, experiment and just have fun with makeup.
ZOOT: Could you give us an overview of your background and your personal trajectory, how you found yourself as a person and as an artist over time?
420bombshell: I took dance and gymnastic classes since I was seven so the performances and stages were always part of my life and I would awayls help others to get them ready for the stage with the hair and makeup. Also I’ve always drawn a lot since a was a kid specially dolls and then I think I was 14 or so one day my head just clicked during covid and I realised that I could just be one my dolls and that was when it all started.
ZOOT: How did your interest in the art of make-up come about and how does it integrate with your identity as a model and drag queen?
420bombshell: When talking about my references I think it’s undeniable that my mom had a lot of impact on how I perceived beauty and image while I was growing up, since she is a hairdresser. I remember leaving school, going to her saloon and spending hours there being fascinated with how different her clients looked before and after leaving the saloon. She also always had short light brown hair while I was growing up and I have this very vivid memory of this time when I told her that I really wanted to have a mom with a dark long hair so she putted in this very long dark extensions and went to pick me up from school wearing those as a surprise. That image still lives in my mind rent-free.
ZOOT: What do you see as the essence of the art of make-up? How does it allow you to express yourself in a unique and creative way?
420bombshell: The essence about Bombshell is really about just expressing yourself in every way. When I first started developing this “persona” I think I had way more defined rules about how I wanted to perceive their image: maybe I thought that beauty was constructed in a way that I had to address in a very clean and well-finished tone and, over time, I think that concept kind of vanished into something more free that allows me to say that Bombshell is more about expressing myself in a spectrum that doesn’t have to fit in any rule. Bombshell is punk in a way, is beauty in her very different ways of being, but is also the blondest of the blondes in Lisbon.
ZOOT: How can make-up be a tool for personal empowerment? How do you see the relationship between make-up and self-confidence?
420bombshell: I like to think that I never put something out without a purpose or a narrative. Every look that I construct is also a character that I imagined, that I built in my head, that looks and acts in a certain way but also comes from a certain place and finds its world inside of my world. So I would say that my creative process goes through meeting my view with my references, from 90s cinema, for example, that really inspired me, to the actual rave scene in Lisbon that gave me a platform to showcase these concepts that I created. Overall, it’s also important to reference the club kids from the New York scene, Michael Alig and the Party Monster movie, and all this culture that was built in the underground scene of big cities and protagonized by queer people.
ZOOT: What was your first experience of drag? What attracted you to it?
420bombshell: As a queer person, I always found some safety in my fantasies and in the dreams that I drawed in my head, so makeup was finally a tool to turn those fantasies into reality. I could really become those characters that I imagined, that I drawed and that I wanted to become, and also bring that message to everyone around me, so it became a vehicle not only to turn my fantasies true but also to communicate my interests, my feelings and my emotions. During time, I realised that the looks that I was putting out were, after all, the most genuine way to picture my mood and emotions by the time that I was creating them.
ZOOT: What are your biggest influences and inspirations in fashion, make-up and drag art? How have these influences shaped your style and creative approach?
420bombshell: The 90s club scene and the rave scene of course have a lot of impact in my visual references, but I would also say Playboy magazines and all this sex icons from the 90s and early 2000s. I remember seeing all these men obsessing over Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton and, of course, Bombshell had to be the final form of all these sexy ass bombshells from America that everyone was obsessing with and, nowadays, remain timeless and hot.
ZOOT: How do you see yourself personally, is the “other-self” you create something like an avatar that you can play with, or do you feel more related to the drag world or do you identify with any other movement?
420bombshell: I don’t really fit my art in a box that I would necessarily label as drag or something. I think, sometimes, my work can come across as drag-ish or might be very influenced by the work of drag queens and kings, but it’s also something that goes away from the concepts of drag in the way that the mainstream sees it nowadays. Everything that I do is actually a visual and conceptual expression of something that I want to express, and sometimes it might go very far from what drag is, at least, in the way that people perceive drag.
ZOOT: How does fashion influence the way you express and identify yourself?
420bombshell: I would say that maybe in the editorial world I was very influenced by the aesthetics in Alexander McQueen’s shows, Pat McGrath’s mugs and Mugler glamour through the years, but I was of course also very influenced by the appropriations of fashion in mainstream pop culture environments, such as the bimbo representations of shallow beauty or all the aesthetic around these blonde girls and their impact in the beauty world. On the other side, my aesthetic also goes through a more abstract, creature-ish way of beauty that goes against all these standards and comes alive in unhuman figures that I also see as pure expressions of my “persona”. Bombshell is like Kim Kardashian, Amanda LePore, Salvia and Matieres Fecales put inside a blender and mixed into a big furry pink ball with a blonde lace on it.
ZOOT: Do you think fashion in Portugal is embracing diversity of identities and orientations more openly? What changes do you notice in this regard?
420bombshell: I think that, finally, the fashion scene in Portugal is turning their heads to diversity and noticing that diversity means inovation and new perspectives into the industry. We’ve seen Sangue Novo, for example, that’s allowing and giving platform to young queer designers like Ivan Hunga Garcia, who is working with sustainable materials and changing the game in terms of inovation and perspective, and we’ve also seen the club kids and the queer community from the clubs being the faces of new projects that arrive in the fashion scene in Portugal – so, I would say that there is finally a tendency to change the protagonists in History and allow all these different identities and orientations to speak up and have a seat in the table, but, of course, it’s a work in progress that is becoming more and more evident as we rise with our views and actually prove that queer people can be very ahead of times.
ZOOT: What is the most important advice you would give to other people who are looking to express themselves freely, especially in the fashion industry?
420bombshell: I’d definitely tell that person to not be afraid to express themselves, but also to look up for their references, find and create a meaning in what you do so it doesn’t look flat. Also money is never an excuse, you can always make trash look gold and use unconventional materials to do your own things; but, overall, just enjoy yourself and have fun playing around with yourself and your image.
ZOOT: How do you see yourself in a few years? What are your dreams and aspirations for the future, both personal and professional?
420bombshell: In the next few years I really see myself blonder, richer, skinnier, more successful, but also remaining kind, grounded and aware of myself and my personal priorities. Bombshell was born 20 years ago in a very small town in the north of Portugal but I always said that Bombshell was also born to be the hottest superstar blowup doll in the whole universe, so you might find her in a red carpet somewhere in the world, performing in a big stage somewhere out there, or really just being whatever the fuck she wants in a pair of heels, a thong and a fur coat.
Thank you Pedro!
