Though she hasn’t yet graduated from high school, 17-year-old Jessica Ong has already become a unique trailblazer in the world of prom fashion.
The teen from Great Neck, New York, won runner-up in the 2024 Stuck at Prom Scholarship Contest for her unique gown created entirely from duct tape.
“I’ve always been kind of an artistic person, I like doing a lot of arts and crafts, and DIYs,” she told the Epoch Times. “I occasionally sew, and I really like fashion. When I saw this contest, I thought it’d be a great way to earn some scholarship money for college.”
The first step involved dreaming up the design and sketching out a rough draft of the dress on her iPad.
“I knew I wanted to incorporate butterflies in it because it’s such a beautiful symbol of grace and beauty—and I wanted to represent my late grandma,” she said.
Describing the dress on the contest webpage, Jessica wrote: “In honor of my grandmother, who passed earlier this year, this dress is an ode to her, crafted in colors that represent her grace, beauty, and spirit. In many traditions, encountering a butterfly is believed to bring good fortune and blessings. It’s seen as a sign from the universe that better things are on the horizon, that obstacles will be overcome, and that new opportunities will arise.”
Although Jessica stuck with the butterfly theme throughout the design process, many of her other original ideas were altered or changed entirely. Her plan for the bodice, in particular, was foiled when she realized it wouldn’t match the skirt she had made.
The first layer of the skirt was white, layered with multiple large butterfly wings that were taped on. In the middle of the skirt, she added pleats and taped on flowers.
The process of making a dress out of duct tape landed Jessica in many sticky situations—in more ways than one.
“Overall, just making the dress out of duct tape was really difficult,” she said, “just because duct tape is such a hard material to work with—it’s really sticky. It took a while to get used to.”
Dreaming up the right design was also a challenge, as there were so many possibilities, and she could only choose one. Fortunately, Jessica had entered the competition the previous year and thus, had some idea of how to navigate the challenges. She steadily worked on the dress for three weeks, using 36 rolls of duct tape.
“Every day after school, I would come home and work on the dress,” the student from Great Neck North High School said.
She would end up spending 98 hours crafting her outfit.
“I had a lot of help from my family, especially my dad,” she said, referencing her father Eric Ong. “My family was also a big emotional help because they were really supportive through the entire process.”
Soon after submitting her design to the contest, Jessica was thrilled to see her hard work pay off. She won one of the eight “Dress Runners-Up” prizes, receiving $1,000 and a package from Duck Brand Duct Tape worth $100. She plans to put the scholarship to good use when she attends university next year.
Looking forward to the future, Jessica remains thankful for the scholarship opportunity and reflects upon it with gratitude.
“It was definitely a surreal experience,” she said. “It was really cool, and I’m really grateful.”
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