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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Showing love doesn’t have to cost you a $3,600 prom dress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With $3,600 I could:
A) Fill my car up 90 times.
B) Take my family to Europe.
C) Buy a prom dress.
You may have seen the story on high school proms in Sunday’s AJC Gwinnett News. It’s accompanied by a photo of a Loganville girl trying on a $3,600 gown at Cinderella’s Closet in Lilburn. The price tag was no typo.
Maybe the young lady (more on that later) knew better. Perhaps she was just trying the gown on, as women are apt to do. You know — checking out its feel and fit.
Tammy Ussery-Bakhtiari has owned Cinderella’s Closet for 11 years. She’s seen styles come and go — from skimpy and bare to this year’s hip look — “old Hollywood.” Chic. Elegant. More respectful.
The $3,600 dress is an egregious exception to what’s typically spent. This prom season, girls are forking over between $200 and $500 for dresses at Cinderella’s.
Don’t think for a minute, though, that high-end gowns linger on the showroom floor. And it’s not always the young ladies who want to spend the equivalent of a Third World income for a dress.
Moms, sometimes, get outrageous. Ussery-Bakhtiari’s seen it.
Last year, a mother came in with the youngest of her three daughters. This would be Mom’s last prom experience, so she wanted to make it truly special. Mom told her daughter she could spend up to $3,500.
The child balked.
“She said, ‘That’s a lot of money,’ ” Ussery-Bakhtiari recalled. “She tried on a $300 dress and she said, ‘Mom, I love this one just as much.’ “
We love our kids. Blindly, sometimes. Our love gets dressed up and expressed in materialistic ways. It’s hard to say no to spendthriftiness. It’s everywhere. Look around your crib. Or the house of your kid’s friends.
My son has a PlayStation 2. So do most of his pals. Many of them have the portable PlayStation 2, too. Miles says he needs one, badly, and that he’s the only one without. Oh, the depravity.
Our kids learn nothing when we bow down and buy them everything they want. Or what’s in vogue. And don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s love. It’s something, but not necessarily love.
Miles was a preschooler when the Home Depot on Jimmy Carter Boulevard was being built. I didn’t work Fridays, so I’d pick him up about noon. One day, I bought a bag of Krystal burgers, fries and drinks. We parked at the massive construction site, ate our lunch, and watched the bulldozers, backhoes and tractors clear dirt. He still talks about that.
And he’ll probably think about that experience long after the PlayStation 2 and its hybrids have been rendered obsolete. When he’s grown, has a family of his own, and his kids bug him for the latest must-have gizmo.
I suspect the same would apply to the girl with the $3,600 prom dress — whoever winds up owning it. The Loganville High School senior shown in the photograph didn’t buy it.
As of Monday midmorning, “it has not sold,” Ussery-Bakhtiari told me.
Yet.
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