If a parent remembers buying a prom dress or picking up a rented tux at Geno’s Formal Affair on Towne Drive, this is that store. Same building at 141 Towne Drive, same phone number, different sign. By the shop’s own account, it ran as Geno’s for 19 years before being relaunched as STORY Bridal + Tuxedo, and it introduced itself to the Hardin County Chamber of Commerce the same way — formerly Geno’s, now Story.
That matters more than a name change usually does. Geno’s was a Lexington company, started in 1972 by a tailor named Gino Guarnieri, and it eventually ran five retail locations across central Kentucky in Lexington, Louisville and Elizabethtown. The Elizabethtown store was a branch of that chain. Now it operates under its own name, and it still handles all four sides of the formalwear business under one roof: bridal, prom and homecoming, pageant, and menswear.
The prom labels it is authorized to sell
Four prom and pageant brands list the Elizabethtown store on their own official retailer locators:
- Ashley Lauren
- Ava Presley
- La Femme
- Tiffany Designs
On the bridal side, Sincerity Bridal — a Justin Alexander label — also lists the Towne Drive address on its store finder. The shop says it keeps a selection of off-the-rack gowns available for immediate purchase, which is the relevant detail for anyone who waited until March and cannot order and wait six weeks.
Appointments are booked through the store’s own site. Because the tuxedo side sits in the same building, a couple can be measured and fitted in one trip rather than two. The store is also part of TuxedoFit, a network of formalwear shops that exists so an out-of-town member of a wedding party can be measured locally and have those numbers sent to whichever shop is dressing the event — a practical thing in a town next to an Army post, where relatives are frequently stationed somewhere else.
Where it sits and who drives to it
Towne Drive runs off North Dixie Avenue, alongside Towne Mall — the 340,000-square-foot mall anchored by Belk and JCPenney, with the Kroger at Towne Centre next door. The mall has been under renovation and is taking on a new name, City Center, which WDRB reported after the work began. The shopping traffic on that corridor is the reason a formalwear store sits there instead of downtown.
Elizabethtown is the retail center of the Elizabethtown–Fort Knox metro area, and it is where I-65 meets both the Western Kentucky Parkway and the Bluegrass Parkway. That road geometry is the plain reason shopping trips from the surrounding counties end here. Fort Knox’s Bullion Boulevard gate is roughly 16 miles north by KY 361. Louisville is about 42 miles up I-65 for anyone who wants a bigger field of stores.
The high schools in range, by size: Central Hardin in Cecilia, the largest at about 1,830 students; John Hardin on W.A. Jenkins Road, around 800; Elizabethtown High on North Mulberry, around 760; and Fort Knox Middle High School on post, a DoDEA school of about 330 whose senior class turns over constantly as families rotate in and out. Those four proms do not fall on the same night, which spreads the fitting rush out somewhat.
The alternatives nearby
This is not the only formalwear store in Hardin County, and it is worth knowing that before making the drive. USA Bridal, formerly Bridal Warehouse, is also in Elizabethtown. The Red Brick Cottage in Radcliff specializes in curvy, mid and plus sizes. The realistic comparison for most families is between shops inside the county, not between Elizabethtown and Louisville.