He designed a prom tuxedo that isn’t just totally awesome—it’s waterproof, too. And now Isaac Cervantes has won two international awards and $16,000 in scholarships in the 2024 “Stuck at Prom” Scholarship Contest presented by Ohio-based Duck Tape.

Cervantes entered the contest as a high school student in Pilot Point, a small city in Denton County. To compete against 150-plus entrants from across the U.S. and Canada, he designed a tux that celebrates both his Mexican heritage and his American home— rendered in a splashy mixture of traje de charro de gala grecado and mariachi stylings. 

After contest judges selected the top 10 finalists, online voters picked Cervantes’ culturally inspired Mexican-American tux as one of two $15,000 grand prize winners. (The best dress grand prize went to a pop-art design by Monica Walsh of Dryden, Ontario.)

Cervantes scored another $1,000 in cash scholarship funds for creating the Most Inspiring design in the contest.

Isaac Cervantes’ Grand Prize-winning duct tape tux [Photo via Shurtape Technologies]

123 hours, a mobile tablet—and 16 rolls of duct tape

Cervantes spent 123 hours crafting the tux out of 16 rolls of duct tape.

To create the duct tux, he first designed it at school and at home, drawing an array of “cutout” designs on a mobile tablet. He created the tux by cutting out pieces of fabric and laying down duct tape on them, overlapping each piece over the next. 

“What took most of our time was making sure that everything was straight,” he says in a video on the contest website. “Sometimes the cutting out and the placing and the duct wouldn’t stick all the way, it would be sweaty and all the adhesive would be gone. But we made sure that we got it done. All we had to do was make sure it fit—and it fit.”

He also made a a belt, and a bow tie, and a sombrero to literally cap off the duct tux.

Isaac Cervantes’ Grand Prize-winning duct tape tux. Its signature flourish is the Monarch butterfly on the back made from the USA and Mexico flags. [Photo via Shurtape Technologies]

Signature flourish: a butterfly made of the USA and Mexican flags

“As a Mexican-American, I’m proud of the heritage and culture both nations have instilled within me,” Cervantes writes on the contest website. “I intertwined the colors of the American and Mexican flags along the sides of the pant legs and edges of the bolero jacket and vest utilizing an ancient Greek meander.”

“The fish, cross, and dove I embedded in the Greek meander represent my Christian faith,” he adds. “The intertwining of these colors and symbols exemplifies how my faith and both cultures have played a role in defining who I am. Much like the monarch butterfly, my identity is cultivated by both Mexico and this great nation, the USA. The monarch butterfly is highlighted on the belt, belt buckle, bowtie, sombrero, and suit jacket.”

The signature design is on the back of the tux—a monarch butterfly with the USA flag and the Mexico side by side on the wings, and stars and eagles in the middle of the flags.

Cervantes spent three full days making the sombrero. [Photo via Shurtape Technologies]

Sombrero was the tricky part

If you’ve never tried to make a sombrero out of duct tape, now you don’t have to—because Cervantes pulled it off after working on it for three full days.

“We couldn’t just grab a sombrero and wrap it,” he says on the video. “We wanted to make it original.”

“It was a very difficult process,” he adds. “The wrapping, and then sticking itself, we had to mold it together. So we grabbed a piece of cardboard, we wrapped it in duct tape, we wanted to have a nice piece of fabric for the cap and we wrapped it in duct tape, put it within the cardboard and then we folded it.”

Cervantes added silver trim around the rim of the sombrero, then made rope material out of duct tape and wrapped it all around the trim before adding additional designs all over the sombrero. 

Monica Walsh of Dryden, Ontario, won the Grand Prize for duct-tape prom dress for this pop-art design. [Photo via Shurtape Technologies]

‘Epic displays of creativity’

Kerry Haugh, director of product marketing for duct tapes at Duck Tape maker Shurtape Technologies, said her company applauded this year’s participants for their “epic displays of creativity and congratulate Monica and Isaac on their first-place finishes.”

“It takes true talent to turn Duck Tape into jaw-dropping styles and this year’s entrants were no exception,” Haugh added in a statement. “Seeing the students incorporate their cultures and passions into their masterpieces is what makes this scholarship contest so special year after year.”

Cervantes ends his video by offering some parting advice to duct tape tux fans everywhere: “Remember—stay snazzy,” he says with a smile, pointing at the camera.

You can see Cervantes’ tux-making video by going here. And you can see all the 2024 winners, including the eight runners up, by going here.

And based on his duct tape skills alone, we bet you’ll be seeing Cervantes on Bravo’s “Project Runway” before too long, too.

Cervantes isn’t afraid to blow his own horn. [Photo via Shurtape Technologies]

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