As the spring months approach, prom dress stores open their doors to the eager high school students. Students begin shopping for the occasion as early as January for the April event. Students have a more narrow selection due to lack of prom specific stores in the area. Becky’s in Buena Vista or Amanda’s Touch in Waynesboro and Roanoke are popular stores amongst students as they specialize in dresses for prom. With these options being available one would think the dress picking process would be easy. However, the steep prices of prom dresses propose another challenge to the affair. 

With the ever rising prices of clothes, prom dresses may seem like a normal item to fall to inflation. However, prom dresses have been selling at these extremely high prices for years. Stores such as Becky’s and Amanda’s Touch have been pricing their dresses well above the $200 range since they opened their doors. For the 2023 season, these stores have dresses going for prices as high as $600. In the last 10 years, the desired style has changed significantly. The more flowy style seen in 2013 has been replaced with the form fitted and beaded look. Retailers attribute the steep pricing to the newly popular completely beaded style, which allegedly justifies the cost. While this factor may not seem reasonable for the pricing, these stores have a very naive target audience; teenage girls. 

With online shopping being difficult and sometimes unreliable, prom dress stores are a convenient option. Additionally, stores such as Becky’s and Amanda’s Touch promote local girls as their spokespeople which adds an incentive to support them. The stores are exclusively stocked with high end designers such as Sherri Hill that are already in the $400 range without markup prices. The ambiance of the stores combined with the aggressive in store promotion by employees can feel manipulative when trying to find the perfect dress. As soon as you are done with one dress, an employee is ready to hand you an armful of other options. Prom stores often have the customer disclose what school they go to so they can later assure another customer they won’t end up with another student dress. These tactics keep the business alive and gullible girls over paying for dresses. Afterall, it is a once in a lifetime experience, and the stores are sure to sell you on that notion.