The Gov's Academy Archives : The Evolution of Prom Style

Prom season is among us. For some, this is very stressful. Finding the perfect look is a big deal to most people at Govs. Girls spend weeks and weeks searching for a dress they like and boys try to come up with original ways to wear the classic tux.

As I’ve been looking through various editions of the Milestone from the early 2000s, something that has jumped out at me is how much prom style has changed. I mean, it has changed a LOT. It’s not that the dresses or tuxes were bad, they were just very different. As far as tuxes go, it seems that the males stuck with a classic black tux, whereas now there’s a lot more color variation. However, I did notice more cummerbunds than I’ve seen at the proms I’ve experienced (for those wondering, a cummerbund is that thing that guys wear around their waist over their shirt with tuxes).

For girls, the main trend I noticed was a lot more short dresses than currently. Nowadays, girls wear long dresses to prom because they are considered more formal. For me personally, there aren’t a lot of other occasions where I can wear a long, fancy dress so I like to take advantage of that for prom. Additionally, there were a lot more printed dresses in the early to mid 2000s prom pictures. Bright floral and tropical prints seemed to be popular in the years 2009 and 2010. While I would say the majority of girls wear solid colored dresses to prom these days, sometimes you will see a jeweled or floral print dress. However, the prints on the older dresses were a lot louder than those you would see at this year’s prom. While this may have been a trend then, I think they looked a little informal and I’m definitely not upset that trend has passed.