Photo by Megan Mertz
Although winter still blankets the St. Louis area, high school students are already starting to dream about prom this spring. Prom by Clarice's (5714 S. Lindbergh) offers a new place for girls to find the perfect dress.
The prom shop, which opened next door to Clarice’s Bridal in late December, carries a wide selection of dresses from five different lines. Dresses range in price from $175–$590 and come in sizes 0–24.
“We wanted a variety,” says Katie Creech Surkamp, who owns the bridal and prom shops with her aunt, Susan Caito. “We understand that not every girl wants a big, poofy dress.”
Photo by Megan Mertz
This year, Surkamp says patterns, crop tops, and dresses with shorts are going to be popular. She also brought in a few black leather options—a trend she thinks will grow in popularity over the next few years.
Through the prom store, Surkamp wants to provide the same “personable” service that brides receive at Clarice’s Bridal. Manager Alexandra Jost says her favorite thing about working at the prom store is helping customers “feel like royalty.”
“Let’s explore... let’s have fun with this,” Jost says. “Some dresses call for a lot of confidence, and some of them call for a personality.”
Surkamp and Jost are both sensitive to how distressing it can be for a girl to attend prom in the same dress as someone else. That’s why Clarice’s carries very few duplicate dresses. Sales associates also can look up which dresses have been purchased by students at a particular school to ensure that each customer has a one-of-a-kind dress.
Clarice’s is offering $30 off the price of a dress for referring a friend, and the shop will donate five percent of the purchase back to a customer’s school.
“Everyone’s going to probably have the same amount of dresses and maybe even some similar lines,” Surkamp says. “But it’s really the experience that you have when you’re doing it. That’s probably the thing that makes us unique.”
