Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.There is one thing a girl must have for prom.
It's not the corsage, the picture in the living room beforehand or the fancy dinner.
It's not even the date. (Besties and throngs of friends take care of that these days).
What makes prom prom is the striking, statement-saying, night-to-remember-making, sashaying, floating, twirling, but typically expensive-ca-chinging thing.
The dress.
Get that?
The dress. The dress. The dress.
All else is mere accoutrement.
Pareshia Perry knows this.
It's why she has her heart set on a flouncy, bouncy princess dress for her final high school prom at Burke.
Catelyn Evans knows this.
It's why her eye is on color: red or white to coordinate with boyfriend Michael.
Ciara Wright knows this.
It's why she dropped $180 on her dress freshman year but hopes this year — as an older, wiser junior — to save her hard-earned dollars.
Taylor Gresham knows this.
It's why she will bring her good cheer and belief in transformation to a tiny shop in a west Omaha strip mall that, on this springlike winter day, has opened its doors to a few select girls for early prom shopping.
The secondhand dresses, some 200 of them in swishy, shiny fabrics and every color you can imagine, have stories we'll never know. Other girls presumably wore them to other proms.
But rather than see them age in a closet, someone took them to the Junior League, a women's civic organization that for decades has specialized in finding new homes for high-quality clothes. Prom dresses are the league's latest focus. About 100 Omaha girls get them for free each year, and the league then sells the rest for $20 a pop to the public until they're gone.
The league, which since 1947 has operated some kind of second-hand clothing store in Omaha, runs the prom dress project from its shop called My Closet in Miracle Hills, just north of 114th Street and West Dodge Road.
Because the league is particular — stating explicitly on its website that all donations should be "next to new" with no holes or stains — the selection is fashionable and in good shape. Yet the idea, as generous as it sounds, concerns Ciara, a 17-year-old junior who is among some 15 Burke girls invited to visit My Closet this day. The girls attend an after-school program run at nearby St. Luke United Methodist Church, offering tutoring and college prep. The program feels like family.
Ciara wonders if she'll find something she'll like, something that will fit her petite but curvy frame.
Will the selection be awful or promising?
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It can't hurt to look. Ciara doesn't want to trouble her folks — Mom's a medical transcriptionist and Dad's a security officer. Nor does she want to blow the paycheck from her 20-hour-a-week Westroads retail job.
Taylor understands that.
"It's a free prom dress," the 17-year-old senior reasons. "You might not find the prettiest prom dress, but you still have one."
Taylor shopped at My Closet last year and found the dress she wore to Burke's prom. It was a long, strapless black number with white ruffles on the side. Last year, Taylor danced her toes off, "walked out of there, makeup dripping off my face, eyelashes off." She'd had the time of her life and hopes to have even more fun this time around.
Burke's prom is almost two months away. But this unseasonably warm January day feels like April. And the Junior League has provided a stretch limo for the shopping excursion, stoking the excitement for prom. It just pulled into the St. Luke's parking lot.
Sixteen-year-old Catelyn, last in the limo, is all smiles.
Smiles for Michael, the boy she met at a back-to-school church revival. Smiles for their red-and-white prom plans. Smiles for her first limo ride.
She is "sooooo excited!"
Seventeen-year-old Pareshia, first in the limo, is all plans.
Plans for a future that a couple of years ago might not have included college.
When Pareshia declares she wants to be Cinderella for prom, she's not off-metaphor. She says she spent her first two years at Burke in a boy-focused, class-cutting, mouthing-off phase. She since has buckled down, in part due to regular attendance at the St. Luke's program. Thanks to a Burke career class, she's focused on an after-graduation plan: Iowa Western to learn how to interpret for the hearing-impaired, then a four-year school to specialize in speech and language.
Taylor also wants to go to college to be a nurse and is working extra hard this year to make up for time lost her first two years, when she wasn't serious about school. Her mother (a medication aide) and aunt (a nurse), have inspired her to pursue health care.
In part, she's at Burke to see a different area of Omaha than her neighborhood at 19th and Lothrop Streets.
"I don't want to be in my mom's house forever," she says. "I want to experience the world."
Her final prom is a last hurrah.
It's a mile-long limo ride from St. Luke's to Miracle Hills, long enough to hear a little Selena Gomez.
"Who says you're not perfect?" comes the star's voice from a cellphone music player. "Who says you're not worth it? . Who says you're not pretty? Who says you're not beautiful? Who says?"
No one says that for the next hour.
The girls stream into My Closet, rushing to racks of dresses organized by size. Clink goes hanger against metal. Swish goes the dress being carted to a changing room. Squeal go the voices as they weigh in:
"It's too long!" a girl complains.
"It's called heels!" her friend answers.
"I don't want to look like a fruit," a girl says to an apple-green dress with a big pink bow.
"This is a beautiful dress. It's a Jessica McClintock!" says a Junior Leaguer.
Catelyn finds her dress right away. It is an organza halter-top, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike. Most importantly? It's white, following the couple's color scheme. It's also too big.
"Not that many options for a size 2," Catelyn says, sadly putting Marilyn back on the rack. "Back to the hunt."
Pareshia bursts out of a dressing room in a dress that clings to her like a glove. It is a slinky, long, red-beaded gown with spaghetti straps. It brings out the red highlights in her hair. She looks terrific.
"This IS cute! I DO look good in this!"
Catelyn sighs. She retreats to a snack table in a corner of the store.
"I guess I should come over here and eat some food so I can fit into this dress," she says.
She really, really wants the Marilyn.
Ciara models a long, latte-colored strapless satin dress with black satin trim and bows down the back.
"Puerto Rico, you look cute!" the girls exclaim in awe, invoking a nickname that is neither appreciated nor accurate.
Ciara has long, curly copper-colored hair and latte-colored skin.
"They just all think I have some kind of Hispanic — could pass to look like Puerto Rican," Ciara says later. "If people ask me, I say I'm mixed. So many different ethnicities, I don't have time to sit there and name them."
And she isn't a follow-the-crowd type.
"Don't go by what other people say is beautiful," she says. "You have to find your own image. You can be unique and do your own thing and still look just as good."
But before all that, a dress must fit.
Like a lot of the girls, Ciara is holding her breath to get the zipper up. The dress works — if she can breathe.
Catelyn gets her second wind and decides to step outside the red-and-white.
"He's just going to have to match with me," she says, bravely trying on other colors.
The hour ticks away and seven dresses hang on the "found" rack. Eight girls with a Burke High teacher and some Junior League volunteers get aggressive in their hunt.
Mary Lynn Hallett, a Junior Leaguer and Omaha transplant, chaired the giveaway last year and is here because she wouldn't miss this "for the whole wide world."
Once upon a prom, Mary Lynn was a high school senior in Lake Charles, La., and was treated to a similar experience. Her charming older brother took her on a shopping spree and bought her whole wardrobe: dress, shoes, everything.
"He took me out to lunch," she says, beaming at the memory. "It was total 'Pretty Woman.' What a wonderful day."
Taylor stuck with black and strapless. This year's dress is shorter and offers a feature even more rare in a prom dress than sleeves.
"Pockets!" she says.
And optional straps.
"So," Taylor concludes, "I'm happy!"
And she wants to make sure her friends are too. She oohs and aahs over their choices and voices her support.
"That's really cute on you," she tells Ciara, who has donned a strapless satin in teal.
Ciara is not sure. She tries on a blue strapless. Then the latte-colored one again.
"Let me take a deep breath. Ready?" Ciara asks Taylor, who has to call for backup to get that stubborn zipper to move.
"Can you breathe? Can you breathe, Ciara?"
Ciara decides she'd rather breathe. Goodbye to the latte-satin. Hello, teal.
Catelyn decides she should match Michael.
"I'm sticking with the Marilyn Monroe," she says.
The hour is soon up.
Fifteen prom dresses are covered in plastic.
Fifteen girls, the whole group from St. Luke, found one.
The limo arrives with a new crop of shoppers. It will take them back to St. Luke's.
Cassie Benzel, a Burke High teacher who works the after-school program, shouts out: "Who is tired?"
"Meeee," answer tired, quiet voices.
Benzel: "Who is sweaty?"
"Meeeeeeee," they answer, amused and slightly animated.
Benzel: Who's excited for prom?
"MEEEEEEEE!!!!"
Contact the writer:
402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
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