After seeing how unaffordable prom can be, a group of seniors and juniors hoping to give back to the community started preparing for their annual Marin Prom Boutique project.
In 2023, former Redwood High School student Olivia Villanova had the idea to create a passion project that lowers the cost of prom for teens in Marin while also making it more sustainable.
The project began with Redwood High School’s Leadership class and was opened up to other Marin County high schools this spring to help facilitate the boutique.
The boutique rented a venue in The Village shopping center at Corte Madera. The space held over 800 dresses and menswear items, open to be picked out for free by anybody regardless of their location or background.
The boutique received donations from various companies including Windsor, Birdy Grey, and Camille La Vie. Inventory was also obtained through public donations collected from participating schools; hundreds of dresses, accessories, shoes, and suits were independently sent to the boutique for free.
Team members then worked for approximately nine months to prepare the space for the public.
Starting March 8, the Marin Prom Boutique was open every weekend in March from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The boutique was run by Leadership students from Redwood, San Rafael, Tamalpais, and San Marin High Schools, with each school taking turns managing it.
Redwood High School senior Charlotte Lacy and juniors Morgan Sicklick and Madison Bishop helped run the boutique the first weekend. That weekend, they gave away 155 dresses and suits.
Students from Redwood have expressed how grateful they feel to have been a part of something that can help teenagers in the community and break the unrealistic expectations of prom.
“It doesn’t need to be embarrassing to not [be able to] afford a prom dress,” Lacy said. “It’s such a real thing. Living in Marin, there’s a stereotype that everybody’s super wealthy and at the end of the day that’s just not true.”
Students from Tamalpaisand San Rafael worked at the boutique throughout the middle of March. Tamalpais students had done a smaller “Pop-Up-Prom” event in previous years and wanted to expand the boutique to make it more inclusive.
These students, alongside San Rafael students, gave away 154 dresses during their weekends.
On the final weekend, the boutique was led by ten San Marin Leadership students and staff members who gave away a total of 131 dresses.
San Marin worked with and advertised the boutique to organize the Senior Showcase, an event for seniors as the final fundraiser for prom.
Leadership teacher Liz Lloyd explained that the access to the boutique’s inventory gave San Marin an opportunity to get more integrated into the community.
The partnership between the boutique and San Marin’s Senior Showcase highlighted the work of Lloyd and her ASB students.
“It was pivotal, critical, crucial,” Lloyd said. “[In] the past the Senior Showcase has been more of a talent and variety show. But because we have this new partnership we have access to over 700 brand new, on-trend dresses.”
By the end of March, 440 dresses were given away by all four participating schools. Students from over 12 schools around Marin came to buy dresses and suits.
The schools involved have received positive feedback from many of the people that obtained dresses or suits from the boutique.
Although the boutique was targeted mainly towards teenage girls looking for prom dresses, the large range of sizing and variety available helped acheive the Marin Prom Boutique’s goal to be an inclusive and equitable project.