FASHION : One-of-a-Kind Answers to Big Prom Dilemma
If teen-age girls in Southern California have a common complaint each spring, it involves their search for the perfect prom dress.
They can’t find one.
“I went everywhere, every mall possible, even the Glendale Galleria and I couldn’t find the dress I wanted,” said 17-year-old Stephanie Hartwick, a senior at Grant High School in Van Nuys. So she did what her classmate Traci Noonan did to get the dress of her dreams: she had it made.
Hartwick had a vision and a rough sketch clasped in her elaborately manicured hands when she went to Julie’s Bridal shop in Reseda last month. Three weeks later she was dancing at the Bonaventure Hotel in her fashion fantasy--a short, strapless, hand-beaded French lace gown.
Melissa Burns and Maureen Delaney of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys had their dresses made by Julie Yanez, the owner of Julie’s Bridal; so did Tiffany Jones and Jennifer Lambert of Calabasas High School, and Amy Smith of Miguel Leonis High School in Woodland Hills.
These intrepid mall crawlers shared the same horror stories about shopping for the finery needed for their end-of-the year proms. Not only could they not find the dress they wanted at their usual haunts, they kept seeing the same styles over and over again.
Burns knew she wanted a dress that no one else would have. She didn’t have specific details, just a concept. “I wanted a Cinderella dress,” she said.
For $350 Yanez played fairy godmother. She made Burns, a soft-spoken young woman with delicate features, an extremely feminine, off-the-shoulder, full-skirted white dress.
Yanez said most of the girls have very definite ideas about what kind of dress they want. They comb Seventeen magazine looking for pictures, and the more adventurous will sketch a design their own.
“I wanted teal green,” said Jones, a dynamo with a shopping list of details (“short, but still formal, with a train”). “I had a picture in my mind and I knew I’d never find it.”
Jones drew her master plan for Yanez. Within days she had a $185 dress with a giant bowed train that hangs over the shortest skirt Yanez has ever made--14 inches.
“Very few of the girls make the dresses too crazy,” said Yanez. Considering this is one of their first forays into formal attire, “they have pretty good taste.”
Even Jones’ mother, Andrea, who was originally appalled by the brevity of her daughter’s dress, now approves, but admits her husband probably would not. “It’s a good thing he’ll be New York all week. He won’t see it until after Tiffany goes to the prom.” Andrea Jones was a hard sell. She has a relative who designs custom-made bridal dresses and was skeptical about the costs, assuming the price would be well over $300. “When Tiffany first suggested having her dress made, I said ‘no way,’ but Julie’s prices are much more reasonable.”
Yanez says that most of her prom dresses run from $150 to $250, but the price begins to escalate when beading or French lace is used. “That fabric can run $90 a yard.”
“Most people are surprised at how reasonable the price is,” Yanez said, “although some don’t recognize the benefits in a custom-made dress and they think it should cost much less than a store-bought dress.”
Even with $200 to $300 burning a hole in their cut-off jeans, these teen-agers simply could not find anything to buy at the stores. The quantity of off-the-rack choices was limited, they said, as was the number of stores that stock prom dresses.
Sizing can also be a problem. Many of the girls, like Jones, are petite; others don’t have the curves to fill out a junior size.
C. W. Designs, a Tarzana-based company, has rushed to fill these two voids--party dresses in general and sizing in particular--in the garment industry. The 5-year-old company specializes in hard-to-fit, teen-ager and preteen party dresses. The demand for their special-occasion dresses has been so great they have opened their factory warehouse for retail-priced custom orders.
“Girls come in here and design their own dresses,” said one of the two owners, Miriam Schwartz. “They can choose the sleeves off of one style, the skirt from another, and the kind of neckline they want. Then the dress is custom-fitted for the customer.” Depending on the choice of fabric, the dresses run from $140 to $550.
“We’ve made about 30 or 40 prom dress this season, and for those girls it always has to be something that no else has. They want their dress to be unique,” said co-owner Bobbi Feinstein. “For the prom they inevitably want it strapless and in black.”
Some of the more appealing designs created by the customers are picked up by Feinstein and Schwartz and added to their wholesale line. The samples are then named after their teen-age innovators. The “Kari” is a black velvet dress with a sweetheart neckline, pleated lace skirt and rhinestone trim around the dropped waistline.
The “Arlene” is a stunner. It was designed by a 17-year-old customer, although it looks like it came from Christian Dior in the ‘40s. The dress is made of an iridescent blue/purple satin with an off-the-shoulder neckline and sweeping full skirt with one large pleat in the center.
“Girls are pretty sophisticated shoppers by the time they are 13 here in Southern California,” said Feinstein. But it isn’t just the high school students who are developing a taste for the custom-made. Feinstein and Schwartz have made a strapless party dress for a demanding 4-year-old.
