In March, The Detroit Free Press announced a $500 contest for high school students to design prom dresses from newsprint. On Sunday it announced eight finalists.
The fact that there are fewer home-delivered print editions of the Free Press with which to make the dresses hasn’t seemed to slow anyone down. An extensive slideshow shows off the dresses, which are supercool — Ari Diaz’ painted dress, for instance, and Ashley Hicks’ complex dress made from advertising circulars — but the stories behind the dresses, collected in Sunday’s story introducing the finalists, are more fun.
-
- Mollie Ribar and Nikki Pilot’s dress, for instance, got torn when an “aggressively driving friend” helped them get it to the Freep’s offices. “After a few frantic minutes of taping in the Free Press lobby,” Krista Jahnke writes, “the dress looked as good as new. Whew!” (Diane Weiss/Detroit Free Press)
Atiyah Anderson made her dress in three days. And if Emily Bankes wins, “she will buy a dress with the money for next year’s prom, since she’s not going this year, and use a bit for her creative pursuits, too.”
Most of the dresses are wearable; a few feature the Free Press’ masthead prominently. (Also, journalism-tools nerds will appreciate the neat voting interface.)
Newspaper dresses have a long history that even a fashion nincompoop like me can shake out of some Internet searches: The Kansas Historical Society has a picture from 1902 of Minnie Biglin dressed as “Miss Newspaper” in a costume made of muslin with The Alta Vista Journal printed on it. Paper dresses were a brief mod fad in the 1960s and die-hard “Sex and the City” fans will remember the John Galliano “newspaper dress” from Season 3. But wait! Here is a gallery of newspaper dresses.
Oh, and thank you, Internet: instructions for making your own (1, 2).
Comments