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Miss America’s 2022 winner Emma Broyles waltzed into the 2023 competition Thursday night wearing a dress for the ages.
Broyles, the Miss Alaska who won the Miss America crown in December last year, took the stage in a dress designed and created by Project Runway alum Aaron Michael and Viper Apparel. What made the dress so incredibly special was the design on the skirt: It features pictures of past Miss Americas.
The “Miss America Forever” gown pays tribute to those who previously wore the prestigious crown. The night’s host, Laura Rutledge, brought Broyles, 21, on stage to acknowledge the dress, calling it a “beautiful gesture.”
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“We couldn’t be here as an organization without them,” Broyles said while showing off her dress, telling the audience how proud she was to be a part of the sisterhood.
Rutledge and Broyles both acknowledged that the women on the gorgeous dress are the “pillars” of the Miss America organization.
And while the story behind the “Miss America Forever” dress was already special, Viper Apparel had the dress on display during pageant festivities, and judging by the photos and videos posted on Instagram, it looks like some past winners stopped by to sign the gown as well.
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Broyles was crowned Miss America on the 100th anniversary of the pageant, making her the first Korean-American woman to take the crown.
“Being the first Korean Miss America, that we know of, is really cool because I think about when I was younger and I was growing up and not really seeing Korean women who looked like me in popular media,” Broyles told PEOPLE after winning last year. “I remember I was ashamed of my heritage and I was avoiding embracing it at all costs.”
“Now that I’m older, I’ve really been able to embrace my ethnicity and embrace my background, embrace the journey that my grandparents made 50 or so years ago,” she shared. “And I think that having a woman who’s kind of an underdog — being only 20 from Alaska and being half-Korean — is representative of all that Miss America stands for.”
The 2023 Miss America pageant is being held at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn.
