On Saturday, SBHS senior, Pia La Salvia, walks into the American Thrift and immediately heads to the dress aisle. She stops and her jaw drops at the amount of dresses loaded up on the rows of clothing racks. She hurriedly starts looking through the dresses. The scraping of the metal clothing hangers against the rods was echoing and the musty, damp smell filling the air. Eventually she eventually pulls out a black dress with red floral printing and some sequins. The dress was a V-neckline dress. It was from the brand David’s Bridal.
“Wait, this is actually really cute,” said La Salvia holding the dress up against her body.
Usually store-bought prom dresses can cost anywhere from $100 to $2,000 dollars, but La Salvia will have a budget of $30 max, for her prom dress.. The dress ends up being 15 dollars. Because she has leftover money, she could use it for jewelry to match with the dress.
“Prom doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend a fortune to look and feel good,” said La Salvia.
She doesn’t thrift often, maybe twice a month. However, if she finds something nice, she thinks she could wear at an event.
This isn’t La Salvia’s first time thrifting for a formal event at school. For example she thrifted pieces of jewelry for her homecoming. She states that thrifting is much more ecosystem friendly, so that is the main reason why she thrifts.
“It’s something you wear only one time and you can find something nice at an affordable price,” said La Salvia.
And this is very true. Girls get ready to spend a fortune when prom rolls around, while La Salvia saves time, and most importantly, money. Girls spend an average around $300-500 on just the dress itself. And that’s just the average. Some dresses can even reach triple zeros.
With all the money saved she can pay off other expenses. Shoes, prom tickets, hair, makeup also are prices that are taken into consideration for prom. Buying a dress from the thrift, might not be as bad as it sounds.
“Now since I’ve bought the dress, I picture myself wearing this on many other occasions,” said La Salvia.
