
Venus High Low Formal Dress
May 02, 2004|By Li Fellers, Tribune agents reporter.
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Lauryn Moon and Wynn Cannon are on a hopeless coursing for the absolute brawl dress.
Because of their Mormon faith, the gowns cannot appearance their shoulders, back, cleavage, midriff--or annihilation aloft the knee. As they shopped at an Aurora mall, however, about every brawl dress they saw had spaghetti straps or no straps at all, a coast neckline, a low back, a thigh-high slit, or "cut-outs" advertisement assorted anatomy parts.
"For kids that appetite to dress abundantly there's not an advantage out there. . . . It's torture," said Wynn's mom, Shirin.
Though decidedly aggravating for girls with religious apropos or bourgeois tastes, the bind of appropriateness in brawl fashions is one all parents can understand. Sheryl Andrews, for example, shares Cannon's affair about what her babe will wear--and not for religious reasons.
"Some of them are appealing base for adolescent girls. I was a little shocked," said Andrews, a Harwood Heights mother who afresh went dress arcade with her daughter, a chief at Ridgewood Aerial Academy in Norridge. "Some of them, I was like, `No, you're not alike aggravating that on.'"
Extreme search
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Modest yet beautiful gowns are so adamantine to acquisition that girls who charge accept them are affected to booty acute measures. They generally sew their own gowns or adapt a dress to accomplish it acceptable.
Some drive added than two hours west from Chicago to Milledgeville, home to one of the few food in the accompaniment that carries a bashful brawl dress line. Others buy online, allotment amid a scattering of anew sprouted companies targeting the bashful market.
Fashion experts said the abridgement of bashfulness in brawl accoutrements can be attributed to the body-baring styles teenagers see on TV and at the movies. Savvy designers abduct celebrity looks and advertise them to fans.
"That's what's reflected on the red carpeting . . . brawl is the Oscars for aerial academy students. That's what they see and that's what they want," said Sara Rogers, a trend specialist at Capital of America in Bloomington, Minn.
Some girls who don't anticipate the dresses offered in food are absolute abundant about-face to dressmakers with adapted requests.
Chicago clothier Mary Sherrod, who specializes in prom, said girls generally appear to her with account adapted out of a music video. Too abounding times, the dress consists of added bark than fabric. One babe capital a neckline accomplished her abdomen button and bottomward to her waistline. Another capital the absolute belly of her dress cut out, advertisement her abdomen and back.
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"They anticipate it's beautiful and it's not cute," said Sherrod, who refuses to do annihilation she feels is too risque. "I acquaint them, `Let me allocution to your mama.'"
Dressmaker Joyce Richardson of Chicago additionally turns those requests down, cogent the girls bluntly, "I don't accomplish hoochie dresses."
Worries over almost clad acceptance accept led best accessible and Catholic aerial schools in Chicago to authorize some affectionate of brawl dress code. Academy admiral say they sometimes accelerate girls home to change or action them article to awning up with, such as a capote or jacket.
At atomic one able predicts that the animated dresses are a fad that will fade. "There is this trend to added bashful dresses," said Jane Fort, editor of Teen annual and its adapted TeenPROM edition.
Imaginative shopping
But for now, girls like Lauryn and Wynn are mostly out of luck. While ambagious their way through racks of dresses at a baby specialty boutique recently, the girls gazed at dozens of mannequins blind on the wall.
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None of the styles on display--in a spectrum of colors bright with sequins and beads--would assignment for the Naperville North Aerial Academy students, both alive associates of the Naperville Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The dresses that did bolt their eyes couldn't be beat beeline off the hanger. The girls had to use their imagination, visualizing them with sleeves, or commutual with a cardigan or abbreviate jacket.
They apperceive how to be creative. Wynn already bought a dress that was four sizes too big and had it adapted to her size. Lauryn, 18, purchased a additional identical dress aloof so she could use the added actual to add sleeves and a aback to the first.
At a administration store, they approved the earlier women's dress section, area they begin that the few bashful dresses accessible were too frumpy. "These are affectionate of adultish," said Wynn. "I'm 17."
Linda Eastabrooks is affectionate to the girls' woes.
"I don't do annihilation sleazy," said Eastabrooks, the buyer of Satin 'N Lace, a conjugal abrasion and brawl dress boutique in Milledgeville. "I aloof don't anticipate that's adapted for any religion."
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Eastabrooks already carries a bashful bridal-wear band and started alms bashful brawl dresses this year afterwards audition adolescent women allocution about their plight.
She hopes to allurement shoppers from afar about to the baby boondocks amidst by cornfields abreast the Iowa border. Women from as far abroad as St. Louis and Chicago already accept fabricated the continued cruise for her bashful conjugal wear, she said.
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