Miami ? The assignment: create a wearable piece from brown paper bags. Publix or Winn-Dixie would do. The tools: an adhesive — Elmer’s Glue and/or an acrylic paint medium. And make sure none of the sticky stuff shows.

The students in Miami’s Design & Architectural Senior High Advanced Placement 3-D class had one week. The results: nothing short of extraordinary — not to mention eco-friendly.

Take Andres Hernandez’s project: surfer hip-hop shorts. They’re holding up so well he’s thinking of giving them away to a homeless person.

Fashioned from four grocery bags, they were easier to construct than the ingenious young man first thought, although he admits that he got help from his grandmother, an amateur seamstress. Laying out four bags, Andres pasted them together and cut them into pants as if they were actual fabric. His only hitch: keeping them up. So he cut a hole in the “waist band” and strung through makeshift twine. Voila, instant adjustable drawstring.

Publix ran out of grocery bags on Tanya Granados’ visit. So she made do with a dozen or so white ones from the bakery section. The outcome: a cross between a bridal train and a female bullfighter’s capa. “It was spontaneous. I had just seen the movie Talk to Her and wanted to do something Spanish.”

Chanel Drummond meticulously folded her bags into pleats to form a crisp skirt, top and rectangular hat that beckoned the nickname “lamp girl.” A visitor suggested an alternate — “pleated princess,” — which Chanel seemed to prefer.

Jodi Starkey had a Bahamas Queen carnival theme going — with a to-the-floor sheath and such elaborate details as fans (front and back), curly-Qs, train, fan earrings and an African-inspired trademark Erykah Badu head wrap. Even an arm bracelet, crumpled and wrinkled from leftovers. “I don’t waste any bags,” said the Trinidad native.

At a distance, Gabriella Gonzalez’ apparently effortless creation — “Evil Twisted Night” — looks as if it’s right off the catwalk. The pink-haired Gonzalez put together the ensemble, a flared tutu-like skirt, creepy Edward Scissorhands-esque glove, corset top and ruffled hat, in about an hour. But then you spot the letters “P-U-B-L” peeking out from her hem.

Marcel Allende’s gas mask was inspired by the Manhattan Project, he said. Allende treated the paper with a medium gloss and crumpled it until the fibers broke down and took on the consistency of leather (the acrylic paint medium makes the paper more bendable, stiff and shiny). The only nonpaper accessory — goggles.

“It was OK, for effect, to bend the rules here,” said principal Dr. Stacey Mancuso. The only problem she could foresee: “He has a little trouble breathing in it.”

Added Howard Miller, chairman of the advisory board at the school, “We weren’t surprised by the amazing talent we saw. Out of creative minds comes genius.” A visitor shakes her head in awe. “You should have been here last year,” Miller said, “we sent them out to the garbage dump to make stuff out of inner tubes.”