Oak Creek High School graduate turns heads with duct tape prom dress
OAK CREEK, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Oak Creek High School graduate Ritika Singh has turned a lot of heads lately because of her prom dress made of duct tape. The purpose of the dress? To win a competition worth $10,000 for a college scholarship.
Earlier this year Singh began searching the internet for college scholarships. One day she had an idea to search for the "weirdest college scholarships in the U.S."
"I thought the weirder they are the less likely they are to be more known, so I'll have higher chances of getting them," said Singh.
That's when the incoming college freshman discovered the Stuck At Prom scholarship contest. The challenge is to make a prom dress solely out of duct tape. The scholarship worth $10,000.
She was determined to make a dress with a message.
"That was when I thought that I kind of want my message to be harmony because we can all have different opinions and different beliefs, but we can all still live in the same planet together," said Sigh.
The two-piece dress took about 272 hours and roughly 7 weeks to make. Luckly, Singh was helped by Pamela Stephan the Administrative Assistant at Oak Creek High School.
"She came to me and said, ' I want to make a duct tape dress its for prom,' I was like what?" said Stephan.
Each detail of the dress was deliberately tapped and meticulously placed. The dress was completed with a purse and corsage. The imagery of diversity and acceptance at the core of its seams.
"These days the world as a whole has become a 'my way or the highway' and that really takes away from our humanity because we argue more than we respect each other or we love each other," said Singh adding, " From my dress I wanted people to just think that ' yeah like when all of these things come on to this dress they look really pretty together and they very nice together, we can live like that too.'"
Singh ultimately did not make it to the next round but said if the message of her dress can at least inspire one person, that's a win in her book.
Singh will be a freshman next fall at Hofstra University and plans to study religions and sociology.