This Kitchener teen spent over 150 hours crafting a prom dress out of duct tape
CBC
A Kitchener, Ont. teen has been named one of five finalists in a North American competition to make a prom outfit out of duct tape.
It took Avalon Hagerman 157 hours and 25 rolls of duct tape to complete her design. She even made a clutch bag to accessorize her dress.
Hagerman, a recent graduate of Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute, said the project was about more than just making a pretty dress.
"When I first started I knew that I wanted to make a dress, but I want it to have meaning," she told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo.
Hagerman said she drew from her own struggles with anxiety for inspiration to design the spiral patterns on the dress.
"When you're really anxious, your thoughts can spiral and and swirl and get worse and uncontrollable," she said.
"The choker around my neck was to show the feeling of anxiety, choking you."
Hagerman said there's also meaning behind the black and white colours she chose, representing how sometimes she views certain situations as black or white.
The gold band around the edge of the dress she said is a play on the "silver lining" expression.
"Except it's gold, so 'gold lining'," she said.
"Sometimes, even bad things have good going on."
The competition, run by Duck Brand duct tape, is for students in Canada and the U.S. The winner is decided by online voting, which is open until July 13th.