High schooler creates ‘runway worthy’ prom dress using 80 rolls of duct tape

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA/Gray News) - Some girls dream of finding the perfect prom dress, but a high schooler from South Dakota made hers out of duct tape and won a college scholarship with it.

Like many high school seniors, Victoria Schoenherr searched the internet for scholarships to help pay for college. She stumbled upon Duck Tape’s Stuck at Prom scholarship contest and sent the information to her dad. The next day, she had rolls of duct tape waiting to be made into an award-worthy dress, KOTA reports.

Schoenherr’s dress, which took over 160 hours and 80 rolls of Duck tape, was a runner-up in the contest and won the “Runway Worthy” award. Her dress was deemed the “most fashion-forward” by the judges.

In making her dress, the high schooler was inspired by the 18th century French rococo style, Barbie and Tim Burton, according to the contest website. She wanted the dress to be both glamorous and as big as possible, so big it couldn’t “fit through door frames.”

“I think I made a 10-by-5-foot panel because I had to make all this fabric. I pleated it and tried to make a skirt out of that, and it didn’t work. I made an entirely different set of sleeves, and it didn’t work. So, just a lot of destroying and figuring it out,” Schoenherr said.

She worked through her prom, costume designing a production of “Guys and Dolls” and even by candlelight during a storm to make the piece what it is. She says hearing the positive feedback of others and seeing her dress on TikTok made it all worth it.

“A lot of people seem to really like it, which makes me so happy,” Schoenherr said.

This isn’t Schoenherr’s first time designing, as she has done costume design for multiple staged productions and her own wardrobe, and she says it definitely won’t be her last.

“I’m very project-based. I say I’m like a border collie. If I don’t have a project to do, I start to eat furniture, like ‘I need to do something.’ So, I can totally see myself doing a big, silly project at some point again,” she said.

Schoenherr plans to attend the University of Northern Colorado. As a runner-up in the contest, she won a $1,000 scholarship and earned an extra $1,000 scholarship for her “Runway Worthy” title.

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