FROM QUILTED
NORTHERN TO COUTURE
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
When you see Lindsay Hinz’s brilliantly
white wedding gown with layers
upon layers of ruffles, accessorized
with an intricate fishnet headpiece
and a bouquet that resembles a single rose, it’s quite
hard to believe that she made it all using only toilet paper.
“It took me two and a half months to make,” she
said. “And that was pretty much every day after work
from like six o’clock until midnight, and then sometimes
a few hours before work in the morning and then
every weekend.”
Hinz, a Broadway costume technician who’s worked
on productions like “Hamilton,” was one of the top 12
finalists out of 1,500 entries at this year’s 15th Annual
Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest, presented by
Charm Weddings and Quilted Northern.
Her dress, along with the other finalists’ gowns,
were featured in a nationally televised fashion show
event on Monday.
“I didn’t place but it was a really, really cool experience
to be recognized for my work and to have it showcased
throughout the country,” Hinz said.
But this wasn’t the first time the Long Island City
resident participated in the competition.
She first entered the contest — which has a grand
prize of $10,000 — two years ago after seeing an article
about it in a Facebook group called Costume People.
“I looked at the pictures and I was like, ‘Oh that’s
really cool. I could do that,’” Hinz said.
She then admitted that although she had a fun time
back then and even made it to the top 10, it ended up
being a lot of work so she decided to skip out on the
following year’s contest.
“But then, when I found out that they were going
to make a TV show and that it was going to be a
much bigger deal this year, I decided to give it one
more try,” she said.
Hinz explained that as a Broadway costume techni-cian,
her job entails putting together costumes that were
already designed by other team members.
As a seamstress by trade who studied at the Uni-versity
of Virginia, this comes more naturally to her than
designing something from scratch — but she thinks
it’s also “fun to have creative freedom.”
“One thing that I love about the contest is you have
the freedom to make your own choices,” she said.
And that she did. As a self-proclaimed “movie buff,”
she took inspiration from a wedding dress that appeared
in a popular movie franchise.
“I was like, ‘OK, what wedding dresses do I remember
from movies that have really stuck with me?’” Hinz
said. “And one that I really thought of was Katniss
Everdeen’s wedding dress in ‘Hunger Games.’”
She used 56 rolls of Quilted Northern Ultra Soft
and Strong, and spent about 100 hours creating the
ruffles in the skirt portion alone.
“I essentially created fabric out of toilet paper, so
it’s like rolling toilet paper out and stitching it together
one panel at a time and creating yardage of fabric and
then I can make a dress the way that I know how to
make a dress,” Hinz said.
Hinz, who lives with her boyfriend in what she says
is a “really tiny apartment” in Long Island City, said that
different pieces of the dress were stored in several
places throughout their home in the months leading
up to the fashion show.
“The skirt is absolutely ginormous and so it basi-cally
took up one of the rooms in our apartment,” she
said, laughing.
Although she didn’t win the contest this year either,
she has fond memories of creating her toilet paper
dresses.
Hinz reminisced about the time she walked to Astoria
Park, where she took pictures to submit to the contest,
wearing the first toilet paper dress she ever created.
“I had people like on the sidewalk yelling, ‘Con-gratulations!’
26 OCTOBER 2019 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
And there was a bus full of children
on their way to school being like, ‘Oh my god, look
at her dress!’ she laughed. “And no one knew that
it’s toilet paper!”
This year was no different, when she went to a
friend’s apartment lobby to take the photos of her
new creation.
Hinz said, “I was there, posing for pictures, and
people were leaving their apartments being like, ‘Oh
my god, that’s incredible, congratulations!’”
Feature
LIC resident is a second-time finalist in annual toilet
paper wedding dress contest
Lindsay Hinz
Long Island resident Lindsay Hinz modeling her toilet paper
wedding dress
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