Julia Smith did not set out to sell prom dresses. Eastern Kentucky readers may already know the outline of the story from the Hazard Herald: she started the business in 2014, selling jewelry for extra money while she was in college and substitute teaching, working, in her words, mostly out of the basement. Accessories led to bags, bags led to clothes, and in March 2023 the operation moved into a storefront at 341 East Main Street, next to the Subway building downtown.
The reason she gave for adding apparel is worth repeating, because it is the reason this page exists at all. She told the paper there “isn’t a whole lot of places for us to shop in person” in the area, and that she wanted to sell things people could try on without feeling guilty about the price.
What has happened since is that a boutique built on affordable everyday clothing now appears on the official retailer locators for four designer formal labels: Jovani, Clarisse, Ava Presley and Johnathan Kayne. Those are prom-and-pageant houses, not casualwear lines. Jovani and Ava Presley are the ones you see repeatedly in senior-year photos; Johnathan Kayne carries into pageant territory. Getting those authorizations in a town of a few thousand people means a store expected to sell real volume in gowns, and it means a girl in Perry County can put on a Jovani in a fitting room ten minutes from her school instead of two hours from it.
Who is within driving range
Hazard is where KY 15 meets the Hal Rogers Parkway and KY 80, which is the whole reason a downtown store here has a trade area bigger than its county. KY 15 comes up from Whitesburg through Letcher and Knott counties and continues north through Breathitt and Wolfe to the Mountain Parkway. The Hal Rogers runs west through Leslie and Clay counties toward London and I-75. Both roads dump you on Main Street.
That puts Hazard High School and Perry County Central, both in town, at the center of it, with Buckhorn School out KY 28 and Knott County Central in Hindman inside an easy drive. Perry County Central alone enrolls a little over 800 students, and Knott County Central about 550 — enough juniors and seniors, across a handful of counties, to move a formal floor.
The alternative is distance. Pikeville has several bridal-and-prom shops. Lexington is 115 road miles northwest by way of the Mountain Parkway, roughly two hours if nothing slows you down, and it is a full day with a teenager and a dressing room. For most families in Perry, Knott and Leslie counties, downtown Hazard is the short trip, and the shop shares that block with the other locally owned businesses that have filled in along Main and High streets over the past several years.
Two storefronts, one business
Jewels by Julia has expanded to a second location at 151 East Main Street, opened with a ribbon-cutting alongside the Hazard-Perry County Chamber of Commerce on March 13. Both stores run sales at the same time and both are on East Main. The designer formal brands are listed at 341, so if you are coming specifically for a gown, call (606) 438-6333 first and confirm which door to walk through and what is on the racks — formal inventory here moves by season, and the store posts what has arrived to its social pages rather than to a fixed catalog.
One practical note: published hours for this store have changed since it opened, and there is no website on file with us. The phone is the reliable channel.