Sydney Thomas’s Vintage Versace Corset Looked Ready to Burst on the Country Music Red Carpet
Sydney Lohr Thomas grew up in St. Louis. Her dad worked for the Cardinals. She was a Team Fredbird cheerleader as a kid and played basketball, soccer, field hockey, and gymnastics. She was the kind of kid who signed up for everything and finished what she started.
Her mother, Cheryl “Cheri” Eileen Thomas, died of breast cancer on August 30, 2023, at 54. Sydney has spoken openly about it, calling her mom a guardian angel and crediting that loss for the way she now moves through the world. She talks about her mother in present tense in interviews. She says she feels her in the room.
A year after her mother died, in August 2024, Sydney wrote down a goal in a notebook. She wanted to be a ring card girl. That was the whole goal. She didn’t have connections in boxing. She wasn’t a model yet. She just wrote it down.
Most Valuable Promotions, Jake Paul’s company, reached out shortly after. Her first gig was in Puerto Rico in October 2024, which is where the “blonde ring girl from Puerto Rico” tag came from. Her second was the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight on November 15, 2024, the most-streamed boxing event in Netflix history. An estimated 108 million people tuned in worldwide. She walked the ring in a white two-piece holding a round card and the cameras caught her for maybe 15 seconds total.
Her following went from the hundreds of thousands to over a million in a weekend. The internet decided she was the main character of the entire event. Her Instagram and TikTok (@iamsydneythomas) now pull millions of likes across posts.
She finished her University of Alabama degree in three years instead of four, graduating in May 2025 with a degree in management and entrepreneurship. She’d said for years she wanted to start her own business. By early 2026 she had signed with CAA. She started modeling, did celebrity poker events at the Hard Rock and the Wynn, walked in Miami Swim Week, attended CMA Fest as a fan, and kept building.
The 61st ACM Awards happened May 17, 2026, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Shania Twain hosted. The show streamed live on Prime Video and on Twitch via Amazon Music at 8 p.m. ET. Performers included Blake Shelton, Lainey Wilson, Kane Brown, Thomas Rhett, Dan + Shay, Cody Johnson, Jordan Davis, Riley Green, and The Red Clay Strays. Sydney attended as an influencer guest, not a nominee or performer. She got there on visibility alone.
She walked the blue carpet in a Versace dress from the Fall 2003 archive. Strapless corset bodice with vertical seams, boning, and architectural paneling in a caramel tone that read almost identical to her skin. The skirt was asymmetrical and deconstructed with raw edges and visible panel seams, falling to about calf length. Metallic hardware at the waist. The corset was fitted tight enough that multiple outlets noted it looked a size too small. She paired it with silver bracelets and pointed nude heels. Her hair was down in loose waves.
She tagged Versace in her own post and captioned it “long live country music.” Her TikTok from the carpet was captioned “but the country world doesn’t gaf.” Fashion coverage in WWD, People, E! Online, and Reuters ran the photos. Reactions split clean down the middle between people calling it high-fashion drama and people calling it a size too small.
