A teenager decided to try her hand at dressmaking for the first time with her prom dress, and the results are stunning the internet.
High school senior Kaitlyn Alforque wrote on Twitter that she’d been “dreaming of making my own prom dress for as long as I can remember,” and with hours of hard work and a lot of ingenuity, she made that dream come true. The results were a gorgeous red dress with flower detailing and an elegant train.
My prom dress, hand sewn with no prior experience dressmaking, just hours of hard work and trial and error. I’ve been dreaming of making my own prom dress for as long as I can remember and I’m so happy with how it turned out! 🌹 pic.twitter.com/wOUl01TiN1
— kaitlyn (@kaitlynalforque) May 27, 2019
Fashion and DIY Twitter is in awe of Alforque’s achievement, especially because it’s her first try at making a dress at all. In less than a day, her post has been shared over 10,000 times on Twitter, and people are congratulating her on her work.
If this is you with no prior experience then I can’t even imagine what you could create with training. Good lord you’d put top brands out of business. This is stunning.
— L⁷ . ∞ 💜FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA 🇵🇸 (@SecretarmyL) May 28, 2019
I would 1,000% sell my soul to buy this dress
— drosa 🥀 (@yawueyporfavor) May 27, 2019
This dress is hella perfect this is what i want my brides maids dresses to look like! How much i can pay you to make 3 in pink! 🤷🏽♀️
— McKayy (@itsMckaylaa) May 28, 2019
Alforque detailed the process of making the prom dress in a post on the blog she and her sister Carissa run together called let’s go anywear. Like so many DIY projects, it seems surprisingly simple when laid out, but the steady hand and attention to detail of the creator is what pulls it all together.
For the top of the dress, Alforque bought a corset top at Goodwill, took it apart, then reassembled it with new fabric and ribbons and an invisible zipper in the back. She figured out the skirt by tracing a denim skirt that fit her and sewing the back and front of the skirt together with long slits on the sides. Over that, she attached a sheer red tulle and made a cape from red tulle as well. But what really makes the prom dress special is the hundreds of little red flowers, each of which was individually hand-sewn onto the dress by Alforque.
All told, the process took about 45 hours over three weeks, which may seem like a lot of time, until you learn that this one-of-a-kind red-carpet worthy dress only cost Alforque $57.
“I didn’t expect it to go viral like it did, I was just proud to make something and I wanted to share it,” Alforque told the Daily Dot. She said hundreds of people have been messaging her, asking her to make dresses for their proms and weddings. “It makes me feel like my hard work was worth it,” said Alforque.
In the fall, she’ll be starting college for a business administration degree and says she hopes to one day start her own clothing brand.