The day after prom

I know – because I’ve been there – that prom is all about the dress. Surprising isn’t it, that for a dress to receive the sort of attention that prom attire does, it gets so little wear time. Like the wedding dress that hangs forlornly in mom’s closet after being worn only once, wrapped in its sad dry cleaner’s plastic case, the prom dress is the cause of much anxiety among teenage girls who spend hours surfing the net or casing the mall for the perfect look, something that will turn guys’ heads and, more importantly, make other girls look on in envy.

Once that’s accomplished, the dress remains in the closet, used only for maybe a random wedding or debut of some misguided relative. That sad bit of news should wake up teenagers who are growing up to be way more fashion-savvy than their parents. To make use of their more often pricey-than-not prom dresses, wearing it more than once should do the trick. As a budding designer-shoe fetishist once told me after purchasing an incredibly expensive pair, "I wear it more so that I can say it’s worth it." She divides the price by the number of times she’sworn the shoes. "Believe me, it doesn’t sound so pricey after that." It takes a lot of chutzpah to defend pricey shoe purchases in a third world country, but what’s a shoe-lover to do?

Parents are often piqued after being informed by their bossy children that choosing the prom dress could be the most important decision of their lives, before deciding on college and their major, only to find the dress tossed into a corner post-prom. What’s a micro-managing parent to do? Well, clipping this story is start.

YStyle has a few ideas about breathing some life into your prom dress. Whether it’s a sexy minidress or a full-skirted affair, there’s no limit to what you can do with a gorgeous dress and random stuff from your closet. So don’t toss out your prom dress just yet. With a couple of key accessories and an open-minded approach to dressing, you’ll get more than you bargained for.

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Contact the designers at the following numbers: Ronaldo Arnaldo (0917-5259823) and Kate Torralba (0917-6221229). SM Department Stores are located at SM Makati, SM Centerpoint and SM Bicutan.