Offbeat Chic: Prom Dress Confessions

by Cassie Lipp

(image via)

Since prom season is upon us, I’d like to share the truth about the prom dresses I wore in high school. It’s been five years, so I believe the statute of limitations has expired on anyone’s embarrassment or school rules I may have broken.

Girls stressing about how their shoes were going to fit into their prom budget never made sense to me because both years I went to prom I found my dresses super cheap. One of them was free. Part of me is disappointed I never got to do that belly-pinching, angle-critiquing marathon mall shopping for the perfect dress that every girl remembers as the time she found the perfect prom dress. I guess I’ll have to save that for my wedding, but I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t acquire my wedding dress in a similar fashion as my prom dresses.

I found the first one while shopping at Goodwill with my mom that summer after my freshman year. Tucked between the usual Winnie the Pooh denim jumpers and choir robes was a cream colored floor length up down halter dress covered in gold and silver sparkles on 75 percent off dresses day. For $3.25, my mom bought it for me because she knew how much I liked to play dress-up. But that wasn’t my intention. My dream was to twirl around in that shimmery dress all night long, and prom was the only occasion in my foreseeable future that would allow that.

So I was determined to go to prom that coming school year, even if I was still a year too young. I would find a junior or senior to ask me to prom. I didn’t care who it would be. Every time the guy from the track team purposely walked too close behind me in the hallway and gave me a flat tire, picturing that dress in my head helped me calm down, no matter how many times he had done it that week. And the day I found a note from him shoved in my locker, I knew it was worth it. I got my long-awaited promposal—er sparkly dress occasion!

Yes, I went to prom with the most annoying person I knew at the time. And I feel terrible for using another human being so that I could wear my sparkles. I didn’t even have boobs at the time so in hindsight I may not have been the greatest canvas for that dress. But did I look like a star that one night! Because that’s what prom is after all—one night living out your dream of flaunting a sparkly dress. It’s stayed on the hanger ever since.

I didn’t go to prom my junior year because I knew I’d go my senior year and didn’t want to get tired of prom three years in a row. I guess you could say my prom dress junior year was a cow costume because my friends and I opted to have a costume party at my house that night instead. My friends and I dressing up as a cow, Aphrodite and Alice in Wonderland, almost getting on the evening news in our regalia as we drove behind a newscaster being filmed on the street and playing Just Dance are much fonder memories than a prom.

When senior year came, I knew I couldn’t wear my old dress or a cow costume to prom. I had to go shinier, more unforgettable, more out there! Luckily I was in charge of costumes for our school drama club so I would spend my evenings and weekends rifling through nearly a century’s worth of old costumes in the school attic. Both the girls and guys in the cast would spend way too much time trying on everything in there and goofing around.

With costumes from probably every musical sitting around, it was pretty much any geek hiding from the director’s dream. King and I robes, dusty Lederhosen, a Sarcophagus, a frock with a super pointy bra sewn into it (affectionately dubbed ‘The Boobie Dress’)—so many dazzling and equally strange costumes. Often times I wondered what purpose some of the pieces ever served.

I can’t remember who did it first or how we came up with the idea, but we began to take whatever we wanted home. It started as a “seniors only” thing. It became an everybody thing. With thousands of items up there, would anyone notice one missing? Some hid items in their rooms with the intent to break them out after graduation. Others started wearing them to school. My friend and I hid some of the things we wanted to take in a light fixture in the attic so we could come back and get them later. We never did retrieve them; I forgot they were there until she talked about it a couple of years later. That may be a fire hazard.

Of course, I planned out the stealing of my prom dress much more carefully. As prom neared closer, I slipped away to the attic during a play practice to grab this bizarre shiny blue dress I had been eyeing since our fall production of Romeo and Juliet. I can’t remember exactly where I had hidden it months earlier; I just remember hiding it in my locker until I had the chance to sneak it in my backpack. I didn’t want anyone to know I took the dress until prom, because I didn’t want the play director to find out and make me return it.

Stealing your prom dress from the school’s attic isn’t enough of a statement, so I spray painted some seashells gold, arranged and glued them together to form a statement necklace. I topped the look off by making a Kate Middleton-inspired blue feather fascinator. I even wore the ensemble again on the catwalk in the school fashion show that spring.

I also wore that dress a third time on Halloween one year, the same night I met my boyfriend. Perhaps it was what got him to notice me. To me it seems that prom is just a night, but the dress you wear is much, much more.