An-18-year-old girl from Illinois has been getting a lot of attention on social media lately for her one-of-a-kind prom dress which she single-handedly created out of dozens of rolls of duct-tape.
When Peyton Manker decided to enter this year’s Stuck at Prom contest this January, she never thought it would turn her into an overnight internet sensation. The long-running competition challenges high-school graduates to make their own prom attire using as much Duck-brand duct tape as possible, for a chance to win a $10,000 scholarship. Peyton had set out to create her prom dress around a Leonardo Da Vinci heme, but then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and she decided to build her dress around that instead.
“I decided to make the dress based on the pandemic because I knew no one in the competition was going to be able to re-create it,” Manker told Insider Magazine. “I knew I would stand out in that way and wanted to base it off of what was happening in the world.”
Both the teen’s prom and her graduation were canceled this year, precisely because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, but that din’t stop Peyton Manker from sinking just under 400 hours of work – 395, to be exact – and 41 rolls of Duck duct tape into her prom dress. She never got to wore it in front of her schoolmates, but, on the bright side, now all the world knows about it.
It was her mother, Suzy, who shared photos of the dress in a Facebook post that has now been shared over 250,000 times. Since then, Peyton has been overwhelmed by praise and congratulatory messages from all over the world.
“I couldn’t believe how many started sharing my dress and telling me how amazing they thought it was,” Manker said. “I’m grateful to have so much support from people around the world.”
The stunning duct tape dress features coronavirus-related scenes, including front-line medical personnel wearing face masks, people running from a giant coronavirus, a virtual graduation, and even a man with a confused thought bubble above his head, which is supposed to represent everyone struggling with mental problems during difficult time.
“The entire dress is supposed to represent the pandemic in a positive light,” Peyton said. “I don’t want people to think about the dress as just trying to show a moment in history. It is a representation that we got through it.”
Although Duck duct tape will only select a winner for its annual Stuck at Prom competition on July 21, Peyton Manker already considers herself a winner after getting so much positive feedback for her unique prom dress. If she does win the $10,000 scholarship, though, she plans to invest it in her college fund.
The first time we wrote about Stuck at Prom, back in 2020, the scholarship was only $3,000, but even then teenagers’ duct tape prom attires were pretty impressive,
