From £12 to £1,000: how much is a prom dress really worth?

<h1>From £12 to £1,000: how much is a prom dress really worth?</h1>
<p>It is the time of year when dress shops up and down the country are inundated with teenagers seeking the picture-perfect outfit for their school prom. But how much should families spend? The BBC spoke to some prom-goers who had splashed out hundreds on a dress – and others who were happy to bag a bargain.</p>
<p>A myriad of regal colours, rhinestones, sequins, sparkles and diamante material catches the eyes of customers as they walk into a shop in Goole, East Yorkshire.</p>
<p>About 70 lavish dresses and tailored suits hang on rails, ready for this year's prom season.</p>
<p>Manager Amy Raggett pulls out one of the dresses. It is black, with pretty embellishments.</p>
<p>But the price tag, some will think, is even prettier. At just £12.95, this prom dress costs a fraction of the price being charged at some of the area's boutiques, where outfits can go for upwards of £1,000.</p>
<p>For this is a charity shop run by Dove House – a Hull-based hospice – and staff here have been collecting and storing the "new but used" dresses ready for "the right time". That time is now.</p>
<p>"Prom dresses nowadays are just so expensive, hundreds sometimes thousands of pounds," says Amy, as she runs her fingers across the rail.</p>
<p>"Prom is just one day. It's one day of your childhood life, and these dresses give families another option.</p>
<p>"I know I wouldn't fit in my prom dress that I wore 15 years ago," she adds with a laugh.</p>
<p>Proms have long been known as an American rite of passage marking the end of school, but until a few decades ago, their impact on the UK was largely confined to films such as Grease, Mean Girls and High School Musical.</p>
<p>Now, the <a href="https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/study-break/magazine-zone/prom-time">British Council</a> – a public body promoting educational opportunities internationally – estimates about 85% of secondary schools have proms.</p>
<p>And it does not take long on social media to find teenage influencers, some with millions of followers, posting videos promoting a glitzy vision of proms, with expensive dresses, elaborate hair styles and make-up, and hired limousines or sports cars.</p>
<p>In Scunthorpe, Scarlett Robinson, an 18-year-old college student, says she made amazing memories at her school prom.</p>
<p>"It's fun, you get to go see all your mates and make memories. It's the last day of school.</p>
<p>"My dress alone was £800," she adds. "Very expensive, but worth it."</p>
<p>Scarlett does acknowledge, however, that she has not worn the dress since that day. It is currently hung up in her wardrobe.</p>
<p>Fellow 18-year-old Leandro Martins Dos Santos says many of his friends spent "a fortune" on getting dressed up, but his outlay was modest.</p>
<p>"One girl spent a grand and a half on her dress and rented out a car," he adds. "I just didn't see the point of spending a lot of money on a suit I was only going to wear for a day."</p>
<p>Sophie Simpson, also 18 and from Barton-upon-Humber, says she tries her dress on each year to see if it still fits, following her prom in Year 11.</p>
<p>"Overall, prom cost me about £200, so not much really," she says. "It was a great experience. I would definitely recommend it to anyone."</p>
<p>At her dress shop in Scunthorpe, Wendy Ashton says proms have "changed enormously" over the past 20 years.</p>
<p>These days, she keeps "prom books" and has a policy of one of each dress per school.</p>
<p>"I think it's everybody's greatest fear, turning up to an event and somebody having the same outfit," she says. "We keep a really, really strict register."</p>
<p>Upstairs, there are dozens of dresses covered in plastic wraps. Yellow is a popular colour this year, along with baby pinks and blues.</p>
<p>The most expensive is priced £899, according to the store's website. But Wendy also has a rail with "more affordable" dresses, starting at about £100, and says she donated about 60 outfits to schools to offer to disadvantaged students last year.</p>
<p>"I think we've had to be more mindful of how circumstances have changed, particularly of late.</p>
<p>"We try and have a good price range here, starting from lower price points right up to the people who are happy to pay hundreds and hundreds of pounds for their dress.</p>
<p>"A couple of our designers have brought out lower-priced collections this year."</p>
<p>It is a similar picture at other dress shops in the region. Down the road at Red Carpet Ready, near Lincoln, outfits range in price from £50 up to £1,450, according to its website.</p>
<p>Back at the Dove House shop in Goole, Amy says many of the dresses they have in stock have probably only been worn once.</p>
<p>She hopes that by offering them for sale here, it can help take "a big pressure" off families who might otherwise struggle to afford them.</p>
<p>"For the sake of just a day, when you could be spending £25 or £30, why would you want to spend hundreds?</p>
<p>"You could definitely have a ball in these dresses."</p>
<p>Listen to highlights from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cghg97/clips">Hull and East Yorkshire</a> or <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cjdw6n">Lincolnshire</a> on BBC Sounds, watch the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tp3n">latest episode of Look North</a>.</p>
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