Miss America Contestant Plans to Wear 3D-Printed Shoes

One of this year’s contestants at the Miss America pageant is opting for an unusual sartorial choice: She’ll be repping for her college wearing 3D-printed high heels. Somehow they’re still completely covered in sparkles.

Betabeat reports that Maggie Bridges, a Georgia Tech senior who’ll compete in the pageant as Miss Georgia, recruited classmates in the school’s industrial design department to create the shoes. They’re not totally 3D-printed, so much as jacked-up using the technique, along with laser cutting, but odds are pretty good it’s the most high-tech heels ever carted to the Miss America competition. The end result is designed to look like the “Ramblin’ Wreck,” which comes from one of their fight songs.

Now, as a person who loves shoes and also someone raised by a University of Georgia fan, I feel obligated to point out that the shoes are, perhaps, a little lacking in the aesthetics department. They’re not something you’d wear bar-hopping on a Saturday night. But they’re certainly pageant-y! The plan is to wear them at the Miss America Parade in Atlantic City, which apparently showcases wild and wacky footwear.

Beauty pageants still exist but now contestants attend STEM universities and wear futuristically created fashion, so all those pulp writers from the golden age of science fiction pretty much called it, I guess.