SPARTA - Peyton Manker, 18, of Sparta, Ill., has attracted national attention for crafting a dress made of duct tape with a COVID-19 theme in Duck Brand’s Stuck At Home Prom competition for the best prom dress.
On Tuesday, July 21, the winner of the Duck Brand Prom Dress competition will be named.
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At first, she thought she was going to do a dress dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, her favorite artist, but as COVID-19 progressed, she thought a Covid-19 themed design would be better.
Manker now has acquired a love of sewing and designing clothing, which was new for her in this process. Peyton also sewed together a coronavirus purse, a mask, and other accessories like a wristband and hair clip. She estimates the dress took 395-plus hours and required 41 rolls of duct tape. There are many COVID-19 details on the dress from online graduations, Zoom meeting, sneezing, masks and an area honoring essential and front-line workers.
Manker’s story has spread as far as CNN, Bored Panda, and many other news organizations.
She explained her creative process for our readers: “For the designs, I drew out whatever came to mind, and then cut and placed them. I added to this little by little. I even had part of the design showcase the people of the world running from the virus. You can see multiple nationalities based on their clothing. For the coronavirus images throughout I covered the dress with very tiny pieces of tape.
“For the accessories, I made color block shoes with tiny coronavirus accents. The coronavirus purse was my favorite accessory. It took the most time to make this but was worth it. I also created jewelry to match.”
Peyton also made a “separately-together” hairpiece with small flowers to let people know that “we may not be together at this time, but we are still together in this!”
She continued: “For the dress hoop I created a ball gown look and measured and bent electrical wire to form the panels and taped two layers together for each hoop. It took four months but the dress/accessories project was finally done by June 3. I love how it turned out and hope you can see the amount of effort that went into this dress.”
Peyton thanked everyone for their constant Facebook support/love during the process.
“The competition has been exhausting and I am just happy I had so many people constantly sending me encouragement and kindness,” she said. “I did not realize how many people I touched with my pandemic-themed dress and I am so happy that I was able to bring something positive out of the whole experience.
She closed with this “No matter the outcome, I believe all entrants have worked extremely hard on their prom attire and all deserve to be winners.”
