From Cheap to Chic: The prom dress upcycle.

I have a conference coming up and one of the fun events is an 80’s themed prom.  Crazy fun right?

Well I wanted to find  some fun clothing to wear.  Needless to say formal wear these days is well, wanting.  And personally

I like to keep things on the modest side.  And too many prom dresses are have necklines that are too low and hem lines that are too high.  It made me think of my junior prom and how much my mom and I struggled to find a dress that had decent coverage and some semblance of a sleeve.  I am sure moms still struggle with this.  It seems like designers these days like to forgo sleeves on formal wear all together.  Honestly I think they do this to save money and design time.  It’s just lazy.

All of this was buzzing around in my head when I came up with an idea.  You can turn a sleeveless / strapless prom dress into a cute skirt!  I ran to my local thrift store but didn’t find anything suitable.  So I went to a local mall, found a teeny bopper store with inexpensive prom wear and there I found the perfect subjects for my experiment.  On the clearance rack I found this:

And score –  it was buy one get one free!  So I was able to get two prom dresses for $15 each!  Happily I left the store ( and happily the store clerk checked me out since my three year old had been screaming that she wanted to go on the mall train ride the entire time we were in the store).

I came home with  a disappointed 3 year old ( I don’t negotiate with tantrum terrorists) these two dresses:

Needless to say that cutting these dresses up and refashioning them is doing them a favor.  While the skirts were pretty the tops were lacking…fabric…style…. you get the idea.

After some careful thought and consideration I converted the dresses into these skirts:

They are fun, have a vintage feel to them and would be great for photos, parties or just a fun night out.  I think the pink on would look cute with a blue jean jacket!

To convert the dress into a skirt takes under an hour and minimal sewing skills – you use the zipper that it already has (no zipper sewing yay!) and the process is very straight forward.

Plus you can save the beading and the jewels for other projects like satin hair clips or fun fast facinators.  You can get Fleece Fun’s  step by step tutorial on how to convert a dress into a skirt here.

There is a downside to using a super cheap prom dress:

How am I supposed to clean it?  Lick it?  Sigh.