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To make her dazzling prom ensemble, Imogen Curry labored for 109 hours crafting a 6-foot set of white wings, fashioning a dark-blue belt decked out with a ram’s head, fishes and other signs of the zodiac, topping the whole creation off with a curlicue pattern of 222 handmade beads — some of them dangling from her cuffs like the fringe on a sombrero.
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But even more impressive: Curry built this intricate and majestic outfit entirely out of duct tape — material normally reserved for repairing a banged-up fender or patching the holes in a pair of sneakers.
And for her artistry, she earned a spot as a top 10 finalist in the national Stuck at Prom contest sponsored by Duck Tape itself, for which Curry might win a $10,000 scholarship.
“I don’t think I could wear it to prom,” Curry, a rising homeschooled sophomore in Hillsborough, told The N&O last week, “because the wings are 6 feet wide, so it might create some problems.”
Curry obviously hopes the fashion-minded public will choose her handiwork in the voting, and were she to make the case for her own work, she would make her pitch thusly:
“Look at the details of my costume,” she said, “I had to cut each feather individually and stick it on, so that was really time-consuming. The zodiac signs in my belt, I cut them out individually with scissors. The duct tape beads, that might be a new technique.”
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Technically, Curry’s creation qualifies as a tuxedo, which pits her work against a competitor who took inspiration from the Met Gala and designed a suit that can only be described as Michael Jackson decked out as a toreador.
Curry, though, made her wing-bead suit as a tribute to flight, partially inspired by her family’s interest in stargazing and partially by the motto inscribed on North Carolina’s license plate.
“To fly is to break free from the limits of the Earth,” Curry wrote in her contest entry, “and that’s something that everyone wants. This suit represents dreams and ambitions that reach sky-high — improbable fantasies that can nevertheless become reality through determination and hard work.”
As versatile as duct tape might be — handy for waterproofing, binding prisoners or covering warts — it presents challenges for the unskilled dressmaker, being sticky.
And though her wing suit may never sparkle beneath a disco ball or grace the rear seat of a stretch limousine, it deserves the nation’s enthusiastic nod for encouraging us all to launch into garish greatness.
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Vote for Imogen at duckbrand.com/stuck-at-prom/vote/dress.
This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 5:25 AM.