Prom Dress Shopping: Its Demise and Real Alternatives

Prom! The single syllable evokes many images: tuxes, limos, adolescent royalty, finding a date, scrapbook photos, slow dancing… “One of many tragic casualties of the rising international cult of fast fashion, hypersexualization, and American inflation” doesn’t immediately rise to the top of the list. But maybe it should?

The event of prom itself hasn’t been touched by this, but rather one of many pre-prom rituals that mark the dance as a milestone: shopping for a prom dress. The landscape of prom dress shopping has changed dramatically in the last few years. What should be a fun, fashionable respite from an otherwise taxing time of year (think finals, AP exams, graduations for seniors, the start of college apps for juniors) has become, for many, just another springtime stressor. 

But how has the market changed? There is no shortage in quantity when it comes to prom dresses–but rather quality. “Fast fashion” is the most helpful phrase that comes to mind when describing the prom dress market. Ethical Consumer, a non-profit publisher on sustainability issues, defines fast fashion as “low-quality apparel produced rapidly to follow current trends in the industry and sold at rock-bottom prices.” Over the past three decades, the fast fashion model has become the international norm: clothes, at all costs, as quickly and as cheaply as humanly (or rather, mechanically) possible. The fast fashion ethos is directly responsible for the biggest problems with the prom dress market today: quality, comfort, expense, coverage, and more.

This applies to our online school just as much, if not, more than brick and mortars. Many OHS students (not just part-timers) attend proms thrown by brick and mortar schools, go to homeschool proms, or join local friends as dates. Then there’s the June prom on the Stanford University campus, an anticipated event for many Pixels, with students traveling from all over the world, near and far, to attend annually and see their friends and classmates. For such a significant event, with many paying for travel and housing during their stay, Pixels deserve to feel and look their best. So students at OHS are not immune, by virtue of a digital education, to fast fashion dominating the industry–in fact, many echo the same sentiment of stress. 

While Pixels certainly have diverse views and approaches to this problem, many seem to share a common concern: dress quality and its precipitous decline.

Georgia Childers, a rising part-time junior shared: “The quality of dress recently is awful.” While having mixed thoughts on the virtues of fast fashion (admittingly, fast fashion seems a perfect choice for a one-wear, one-night event like prom), she continued: “...fast fashion has really oversaturated the market, so even if you are looking for quality pieces, it’s hard to find one.” Fabrics, even on more expensive dresses at retailers like British brand House of CB, are often made out of 100 percent nylon textiles or polyester spandex. These fabrics are not just low quality, wearing out quickly and hard to take care of, they aren’t breathable. More organic fabrics like cotton have thinner weaves and lighter threads that allow circulation through the fabric, but the average prom dress material is polyester, made of plastic fibers that trap heat to the body while keeping air out. Not only is this inconvenient for everyday wear, it’s especially problematic for a sweaty event like prom, where it’s easy to get overheated amid dancing and crowds. At an event like this, your attire can make all the difference. It’s the reason why people are advised to wear light layers at raves and concerts–something as simple as the fabric of your dress can be the difference between an amazing night and passing out. 

In addition to this problem of functionality, disregarding (for the sake of brevity and paying these complex issues their due diligence) the deep and pressing ethical problems of fast fashion, the fabrics just look worse. They cut proportions off in strange places, hug unhuggable skin, lack linings, pinch shoulders, and chafe uncomfortably. Avoiding these dresses is difficult, especially when you factor in near-deceitful marketing. Turiya Misra, a single-course rising junior said: “Quality issues are…a huge problem–dresses look way different online than they do in real life, and I’ve had to return dress[es] when the material was a lot cheaper and worse in quality than it seemed to be on the website.” Julia Holmes, a rising senior, shared: “It’s so easy to stumble upon what looks like a beautiful dress, only to do some research on the brand and find out it’s a scam.”

Then there’s the lack of coverage, which I find is nearly unnoticeable to our generation, as we’ve been born and raised in an increasingly oversexualized culture. But many dresses show a shocking amount of skin that, marketed for an event attended by children, seems to border on corporate predation. Necklines descend to navels, backless bodices tow the line, entirely unnecessary slits reach up to hip bones, and fabric seems designed to squeeze until every curve and pucker of skin is revealed in near-translucence. Misra shared more: “There were less and less options [for dresses] because all the designs seemed to be converging on a weird combination of tight, revealing, and lacy, which is fine, but not what I was looking for…I'm not sure why dress companies are so insistent on designing outfits for teenagers, teenage girls in particular, that are so revealing and uncomfortable.” Fast fashion styles filter down from global trends, but one would think companies, brick and mortar stores as well as digital marketplaces, would curate their “prom” sections, aisles or webpages, in accordance with conventions of age and what is appropriate and safe. Of course, one is free (as long as their school’s event dress code allows) to wear whatever one wants–but the truth remains that the number of girls comfortable and confident in these styles is a minority, and this is not represented in the market. I’m not an economist, but the laws of supply and demand seem to have exceptions–sometimes we take what we are given, especially among a customer base so fundamentally undemanding and undiscerning as the adolescent.

Lastly, expense. The relationship between quality and price has been obliterated and is now deeply disproportional. While there is an abundance of cheap, bad clothing–this is a 21st century constant–there is also an abundance of expensive, bad clothing. Georgia shared that “...It’s nearly impossible to find a comfortable dress that is within my budget.” To get something legitimately wearable, students have to spend upwards of hundreds of dollars. Julia shared: “...I’m a bit shocked. My Homecoming dress this year was roughly $70, and seemed reasonable. It was excellent quality…Prom dresses are another beast entirely. I’ve seen prices ranging from $50 to $1000, with the average hovering around $300. That’s a lot of money for a subpar dress.”

Or do they? One student, rising full-time senior Charlotte Own, has pioneered a highly commendable different course of action. Instead of disillusionment, she chose an alternative route to prepare for the OHS prom. Charlotte shared: “I thrifted [my dress] at a relatively high-quality Japanese thrift store…for an equivalent of around $20.” Thrifting is not only a sustainable recourse in the face of a difficult prom dress market, but may solve problems of both quality, comfort, and expense that many are facing. Before thrifting, Charlotte pattern sewed her own dresses. “It’s become a yearly tradition for me to get straight to sewing…right after finals end so I can have that week in between finals and prom to work on it.” 

So for the prom dress market, not all is doom and gloom. While systemic problems abound, these are not the preoccupation of the average highschooler just searching for a dress in time. Instead, a fix may lie in the quieter solutions of innovation and creativity. Not everyone can sew, but most people live in proximity to a thrift store. In the face of all these issues, I urge OHS students preparing for prom to close the Shein tab and choose nonparticipation. If you can afford not to, don’t feed into the fast fashion ecosystem, but try something new. Ask parents and relatives if they have any special-event dresses you could borrow. Vintage is cool. Older styles may offer better quality and more coverage. Try your local Goodwill, mom-and-pop thrift shop, a high-quality flea market, or even a luxury resale spot. It’s cheap. Find a gem. If you’re up for it, give creation rather than consumption a shot. It might not turn out so bad. For some people, fast fashion is truly the best option, and if that’s necessary in your circumstances this prom season, more power to you and no judgment. But for many of us, alternatives do not just exist, but abound–they just take effort, a little bit of imagination, and the will to seek them out.