Two Thousand Gowns and a Line Out the Door: ‘Pretty in Pink’ Sends 300 Girls to the Prom

The doors opened at 10 a.m. By 8 that morning, a hundred people were already waiting.

The “Pretty in Pink” boutique at Bel Air Mall in Mobile, a one-day giveaway of donated formalwear organized through the St. Paul’s Episcopal School Interact Club and its Rotary sponsors, distributed roughly 300 prom dresses on Saturday to girls who could not otherwise have afforded them.

Organizers did not close the shop until everyone in line had a chance to look. The girls came from Mobile and Fairhope, from Loxley and Gulf Shores, and from as far away as Pensacola, Biloxi and New Orleans. Only five went home without a gown.

A Store, Not a Handout

The organizing principle, according to community services director Leslie Lerner, was that the event should feel like shopping rather than charity. Some 2,000 gowns — a few of them retailing for as much as $500 — were arranged on racks the way they would be in a high-end store. Interact Club volunteers worked the floor as personal shoppers, pulling sizes, fetching mirrors and steering the undecided.

“The girls were awestruck,” Lerner said. One twirled in front of a mirror and announced, “I feel like Cinderella.”

Another moment stayed with the organizers. A mother who had lost her job six months earlier hugged Lerner with tears in her eyes; she had not known how she would pay for a dress for her daughter’s senior prom.

Recession Timing

The event landed in the worst months of the recession, when unemployment along the Gulf Coast was climbing and household budgets had no room in them for a dress worn once. A prom gown is the kind of expense that quietly disappears from a family’s spring when a paycheck does — and the kind of absence a teenager feels acutely.

That, Lerner said, is the point of the project. “Giving a girl the gift of a gown is so much more than simply providing a beautiful dress,” she said. “It builds her self esteem, self worth, and makes her feel like someone special.” She offered the volunteers a line about things that cannot be seen or touched, only felt with the heart. By the end of the day, several of them said, the sentiment had stopped sounding like a slogan.

Bigger Next Year

Bel Air Mall agreed to partner with the group again in 2010, and organizers set a target of at least 500 dresses.

Lerner credited a long list of volunteers for making the day work, among them Heather Normand, Rachel Graham, Emily Callaway, Catherine Vulevich and Linda Wettermark, along with the Interact Club members and the school’s Service Leadership Class.

How Interact Fits In

Interact is Rotary’s service club program for high school students. The prom dress project is the St. Paul’s chapter’s signature effort, and adults who volunteered described the day in terms usually reserved for much larger charitable undertakings: hours of stories exchanged in line, mothers and daughters waiting together, and a steady procession of girls emerging from behind a curtain to a small round of applause.

Rotary International created Interact in 1962, when the first club was chartered in Melbourne, Florida. The clubs are open to young people ages 12 to 18, are sponsored by a local Rotary club that provides adult guidance, and are expected to take on at least one service project in their own community and one with an international focus each year.

Anyone interested in donating gowns or volunteering for the 2010 boutique was asked to contact the organizers through the club.