Students make their own prom dresses

Junior Charlotte Brandenberg designed and assembled her prom dress by hand.

Prom preparation is busy enough, but two students took it to another level by creating and making their own outfits for the big night. Senior Jordan Caruso and junior Charlotte Brandenburg both decided to accept the challenge and had to first design and gather materials to create their handmade dresses before even beginning the actual construction of each dress.

Caruso let her imagination take control and had many sketch ideas, but “The first sketch I made was pretty different from what I ended up with, and I actually changed my mind right before making it, so I don’t even have a sketch of the actual dress.”

As for Brandenburg, she knew exactly what she wanted and stuck to her plan. She said, “I came up with a design about a year ago that I really wanted to make and wear, so it didn’t take much to persuade me [to start creating my dress for this year].”

Both girls started on their dresses back during spring break. Caruso finished her dress this past week, and it’s ready to go for this Saturday night. Brandenburg said, “I have a few decorative details to add, but the dress would be wearable as it is now.”

The amount of time that each girl put into their dresses would be hard to  calculate, but both agreed that they would definitely go through this experience again.

Caruso had a considerable amount of experience beforehand with creating dresses and designs and styles for herself. She added that one reason she even created her prom dress in the first place was because “I’m going to school next year in New York City for fashion design, so I wanted to have the practice, and I really just wanted something that you couldn’t buy in a store.”

Senior Jordan Caruso used her creativity to make her one-of-a kind dress. She used this opportunity as practice before heading to New York to study fashion design in college.

Brandenburg has also had a good amount of experience with designing and creating things.  “I started out making costumes for cosplay, then made a ball gown last year.” Unlike Caruso, Brandenburg does not have plans for going into a career dealing with fashion and clothes. “I am planning on pursuing a career in architecture, so a lot of design skills and experiences will hopefully carry over,” Brandenburg said.

Look out for these two girls and their beautiful and creative dresses at this 2014 prom night on May 3.