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Britain has entered peak school prom season as students celebrate the end of exams. If you are the parent of a teenager, or work in education, you have my sympathies.
Like Black Friday, school proms are a costly US import. The past decade has seen the old UK sixth-form discos and leaver’s balls transform into showy rites of passage, locking parents into a spending arms race.
For girls, the prom experience can be akin to a mini wedding. TikTok has intensified the mania, with videos of elaborate prom dress try-ons, prom hairstyles, prom make up looks and even prom nails.
The more dramatic your transformation, the better it will play on social media. TikTok boasts over 200mn “prom transition” before and after videos. They are surprisingly addictive to watch.
Add the cost of frock, shoes, bag and entry ticket, and a school prom can easily become a four-figure outlay, says Kate Hardcastle, founder of brand consultancy Insight with Passion. “Parental guilt is a massive commercial button for organisations to press,” she says.
But it does not stop there. Social media has made “prom arrival” popular too. Hiring a stretch limo is so commonplace that there is now a thriving market in prom helicopter rental. High Flying Helicopter, a London-based company, offers one such service with prices starting from £1,500.
I am not anti-prom. If anything, students whose education was horribly disrupted by Covid deserve to have a proper party. But the costs and social expectations of attending are now so high, there is a risk not everyone will be able to afford to go to the ball.
This is what inspired 29-year-old Ally Elouise to set up Prom Ally in 2015, a social enterprise that lends outfits free of charge to students who couldn’t otherwise afford one.
The good news is that donations of beautiful, expensive outfits to such services are high. The bad news is that the seasonal nature of proms means charities face high costs to store their stock until summer rolls around again.
Men’s suits have been in particularly high demand since the pandemic — perhaps reflecting the increasingly casual nature of workwear, which means there is less chance of borrowing one from an older brother.
Teenagers are also finding preloved prom wear online, via Vinted and Facebook Marketplace, but this is not just about saving money. Hardcastle calls this “Eco prom”, noting that searches for upcycled fashion on Pinterest are up nearly 300 per cent in a year as teens become more conscious of their consumption. Customising a dress from a thrift store or forgotten classic from your mum’s own wardrobe wins political points as well as style ones.
An alternative is renting designer gear from other people’s wardrobes. The app By Rotation hires out prom dresses from £5 to £50 per day, plus postage.
Of course, renting formalwear has long been the norm for men. High street outfit Moss (it dropped the Bros last year) hires suits from £79.95. “We’re in the transformation business,” says the firm’s head of visual development, Robbi Hicks, noting how self-conscious teens who turn up for their appointment with their parents visibly grow in confidence when they don a suit for the first time.
Sharing the magic of the fitting room experience is something parents may consider worth paying for. Yet social media is never far away. TikTok has inspired a much more relaxed fit, says Hicks, and (wait for it) the return of the double-breasted suit.
All this spending means there’s an argument that proms are good news for the UK economy. It has certainly been a godsend for independent bridal boutiques, many of whom now have a sideline in prom dresses.
“Every year, prom gets bigger and bigger,” says Kay Heeley, founder of Angel Couture in Yorkshire. Parents typically spend £500, and she has the mother of all spreadsheets to guarantee that no two students will end up wearing the same dress at the same event.
What dizzying heights could prom mania reach next? With the teen market so saturated, the focus is shifting to “tweens”, with friends reporting that proms to mark the end of primary school are now catching on. Then there’s nursery graduation ceremonies, with four-year-olds sporting caps and gowns as parents hold up a sea of mobile phones.
I’m no party pooper, but there is an obvious question. With all of this glitz, glamour and hashtags, have we forgotten that real life friendships are what these rites of passage were originally designed to celebrate? Long after the spray tan has faded and the dress goes back in the wardrobe, the lasting quality of friendships made in your formative years is what will hold true value.
Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and author of the FT’s Sort Your Financial Life Out newsletter series; claer.barrett@ft.com; Instagram and TikTok @ClaerB
