Lori Ann Steiner bought a prom dress at Foxy Lady when the store was still a converted house on Ocean Boulevard with the gowns kept upstairs. She went to work there in 1982 and is now an owner and partner in the Siesta Key store. Lorry Eible, who opened the shop in 1972 after moving from New Jersey to Sarasota with two young sons, still runs the business with her. Between them that is more than fifty years of putting Sarasota teenagers into formal dresses on the same island.
The store has moved exactly once. Eible closed on a run-down building on Ocean Boulevard in October 1972 and named the boutique after the Jimi Hendrix single. Ten years later, John Walter — her boyfriend then, her husband later — built a 3,500-square-foot building around the corner at 209 Beach Road, and Foxy Lady has been there since 1982. Siesta Key sits just off Sarasota on the Gulf side of Florida, and the store is a block from the sand, at the edge of Siesta Key Village. The same 1982 building also houses Sassy Hair; Eible has said the two businesses feed each other.
What that means if prom is the reason you’re going
This is not a prom warehouse, and it does not pretend to be. Steiner has described the store’s customer as a woman in her late 30s and up, and Joseph Ribkoff is one of its steadiest lines. The prom side is real but narrow: Foxy Lady appears on the official retailer locators for Jovani and Jessica Angel, and the Jovani listing carries the Beach Road address and the (941) 349-6644 number.
Nothing is sold online. The store says on its own site that it deliberately keeps its merchandise off the web because fit and service are the point, so what is actually hanging on the rack in March is knowable only by calling or walking in. Buying is also small-batch by design: Eible and Steiner buy in New York and Atlanta in short quantities, so stock turns over and a gown you saw in February may be gone in April. That works in a shopper’s favor at prom, when the whole exercise is not matching anyone else in the photos.
Hours on the store’s site are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday. Some directory listings show a Sunday afternoon at the Siesta Key store, which is worth a phone call to settle before you cross a bridge for it.
Two Foxy Ladys, and the gowns are split between them
A second store opened in 1984 in a rebuilt gas station on St. Armands Circle, at 481 John Ringling Blvd. The business calls that one Foxy Lady West, and it has become the flagship. Siesta Sand’s 2019 profile placed the large evening-wear selection at St. Armands rather than on Beach Road. The two are not a walk apart — St. Armands is north of downtown across the Ringling causeway, Siesta Key is south — so if you are making one trip for a formal dress, ask on the phone which store has the gowns in your size before deciding which drive to make.
The drive, the bridges, the parking
No high school sits on the key. The students shopping here come over one of two drawbridges: Siesta Drive at the north end, Stickney Point Road at the south. Both open for boats, so build in a few minutes. Riverview High, about 2,700 students, and its old rival Sarasota High are both on the mainland side, and Beach Road is a straightforward run from either once you are on the island.
Parking is the real variable. The Siesta Key Chamber lists free on-street spaces along Ocean Boulevard plus free and paid lots; the beach accesses nearest the store are small, 25 spaces at Ocean and Beach Road and 35 at 412 Beach Road, and they are used by people going to the beach, not the shops. The free Siesta Key Breeze trolley runs the Village if you park once and stay a while. February through April is both prom-shopping season and the height of the tourist season here, which is not a coincidence you can plan around — just leave earlier than you think you need to.
The Village around the store has changed far more than the store. Eible has said there were 15 to 20 clothing stores on the key when she opened; by 2019 Steiner was describing Foxy Lady as the only boutique left out there. Hurricane Helene’s surge flooded the island in September 2024 and Milton followed two weeks later; six months on, local reporting described Siesta Key as largely back to normal, with visitor numbers still down.
Fit test: if you want a Jovani or Jessica Angel gown that nobody at your school will be wearing, and you are fine with a small, fast-changing rack in a store that mostly dresses adults, Beach Road is worth the bridge. If you want to try on forty dresses in one afternoon under one roof, shop the mainland instead.