Rumor opens in January and closes at the end of April. For the other eight months, the house at 412 Loras Blvd is rented out as a guesthouse. That is the whole business model, and it shapes everything about how you shop here.
The posted hours are Saturdays, 10 to 3, with appointments available on other days. The store moved into this house in January 2016.
The calendar problem
Prom in eastern Iowa lands after Rumor’s season ends. Hempstead’s prom in 2025 was held May 3, in the atrium at Clarke University — a week past the shop’s April close. So the real shopping window for a Dubuque-area junior or senior is January through March, with April as the last call for anything still on the rack. Waiting until three weeks before the grand march means driving somewhere else.
The block
Loras Boulevard climbs the bluff from Central Avenue up toward Loras College, and the 400 block is in the West Eleventh Street neighborhood — nineteenth-century houses, a steep grade, street parking. The store is one of those houses. There is no mall entrance and no storefront window; the racks are in the front rooms. By the shop’s own description, whoever came along with you waits on the couches while you try things on, and people tend to stay longer than they planned and weigh in on each other’s picks.
Who ends up here
Dubuque Senior, at 1800 Clarke Drive, is the closest high school — a few minutes up the hill. Wahlert Catholic is on Kane Street and Hempstead is out on Pennsylvania Avenue, both a short drive west. Outside the city the draw runs to Western Dubuque in Epworth, Beckman Catholic in Dyersville, and the smaller schools at Cascade, Bellevue and Maquoketa. Across the river it reaches East Dubuque and Galena in Illinois and into southwest Wisconsin; East Dubuque High enrolled 181 students in 2023-24, which is the scale of a lot of the towns in this tri-state pocket.
The alternative to shopping in Dubuque is a highway day. Madison is about 90 miles northeast, Iowa City is a little over an hour southwest, Chicago is three hours out. For a first dress, that is a lot of driving to do twice, which is the practical case for a Saturday morning on Loras Boulevard.
Labels
Rumor is listed as an authorized retailer on the official locators for two prom houses: Alyce Paris and Clarisse. Both run to the beaded, fitted, long-gown end of the market rather than to bridesmaid or mother-of-the-bride styling.
Because the store is only open part of the year and Saturdays are the anchor, call ahead at (563) 585-5850 if you need a weekday. A house-sized shop in January is a different experience from a house-sized shop on a Saturday in late March, when everyone else in the Mississippi Valley Conference has had the same idea.