With prom rapidly approaching girls are struggling to find the perfect dress. Dresses can range from differences in fit, color, and price. Upperclassmen are avidly checking online websites for their dream dress or traveling across the Portland area to find “the one.” 

Junior, Ella Hubka went to Macys and Nordstroms to try on dresses. Unfortunately she had no luck. She claimed, “Macy’s dresses were too long and not the quality that I wanted.” Because of this she ended up looking at Lulus online and found a dress she liked — her dress arrived this past week. She claimed another struggle she had was figuring out what length to purchase. Hubka wanted to find a dress that she could move around and dance in, but that was still long enough to be considered a prom dress. 

Another girl at WVHS who struggled with finding the perfect dress was Hannah Kelso. She looked online at: Lulus, Luxedress, Windsor, Freepeople, David’s Bridal, Bhldn, and Asos. While browsing online she felt that all dresses looked the same and just couldn’t find what she was looking for. With this she ended up going to the mall with her mom and checking out: JCPenney, Aritzia, and Macy’s. Her end goal was to “…find a dress that was unique to my style and in my price range.” While searching the racks she found lots of “basic and sparkly” dresses. Luckily with lots of digging she found a floral green dress with cutouts in the sides. Not only was it a unique color, but it had a very different design she hadn’t seen before. 

Personally I feel we’re on the verge of evolving the idea of “traditional” prom dresses and at a turning point. Previously the more sparkles on the dress the better, as time has gone on this has changed and become slightly less desirable for many. Another aspect that’s totally changed are the big fairytale dresses that were nearly 5 ft wide in width. Not only are these dresses ridiculously expensive, but they’re not practical.

With all that said, dresses for this year’s prom still have to be purchased regardless of the difficulty. For juniors this will be their first prom ever attended and for many seniors it’s the first official high school prom they’ll have gone to. Hubka quotes, “I’m super excited for prom this year! It’ll be fun to see how it’s different from the other high school dances such as winter formal and homecoming.”