Where to Buy Sherri Hill Prom Dresses

Forget the size on your jeans. Sherri Hill cuts to formal-wear sizing, and the brand says "most people wear one to two sizes larger in Sherri Hill." So try it on at the shop and let the staff tell you which size to order. Caught between two? Take the larger one. A tailor can take in the rest.

The size run goes from 000 to 26, but that is the outer limit, not the norm. In the brand's own product data, about half of its prom styles stop at 18 and more than a quarter stop at 14. Only about one in five goes all the way to 26. There is no separate plus-size line, so a shopper in a larger size is choosing from a smaller slice of the same racks. Those sizes can cost more, too. Some shops price sizes 20 and up higher than 000 to 18, usually by $50 and on some styles by $100. The brand also warns that stores don't carry every size, so call ahead and ask which styles the shop can get in yours.

Plan on a hem. Floor-length gowns "are usually hemmed to your height and the shoes you'll wear," the brand says, and beyond that, "every gown is constructed differently, so what can be altered depends on the individual dress." Bring your prom shoes to the first fitting.

Sherri Hill sells only through authorized retailers. Any of them can be found on the brand's store finder, and that list is the whole test: in the brand's words, "a seller that is not listed there is not an authorized Sherri Hill retailer."

Returns belong to the shop. Sherri Hill's FAQ says its retailers' return policies vary, so get the store's rules in writing before you pay a deposit. Two more things to know before you go. The company says its retailers may not rent the gowns, so plan to buy. And custom made-to-measure is rare: only a select few retailers offer it, and they are among the couture shops on the store finder.

Several authorized shops make competing claims to be the biggest Sherri Hill seller in their part of the country:

Those exclusive claims have a basis. The company says it grants territorial exclusivity to its boutiques, which is why one town can have a single Sherri Hill seller while the next town over has none. If the nearest shop is a drive, it may still be the only one for a while.

The celebrity record starts on the runway. Kendall Jenner's first show was Sherri Hill's debut at New York Fashion Week in 2011, W magazine reported, and she came back two years later with Kylie. Daily Front Row wrote in 2015 that Selena Gomez, Kendall and Kylie Jenner and Bella Thorne had all worn Hill's designs. The brand also names Zendaya, Ariana Grande and Carrie Underwood among its wearers. It says it has shown at New York Fashion Week more than 20 times since that 2011 debut, and each new spring line still premieres there in the fall.

Kendall was not the only one. In a 2017 story, W magazine credited Hill's New York shows with helping launch the runway careers of Hailey Baldwin (now Bieber), Grace Elizabeth and Delilah Belle Hamlin along with Kendall, and pictured Baldwin on the Spring 2013 runway. The brand says Baldwin, like Kendall, walked her first New York Fashion Week show for Sherri Hill. For a prom label, that is an unusual line on the résumé.

Pageants are the other stage. In August 2018, Miss America named Sherri Hill its official gown provider in a three-year deal running to the organization's 100th anniversary. It covered Cara Mund's gowns for the 2018 competition and the gowns worn by the next three Miss Americas during their year of service. The brand dates the partnership to 2017, and it no longer runs. Sherri Hill also says it was Miss USA's official fashion sponsor in 2012, and it names Olivia Culpo and Cheslie Kryst among the titleholders who wore its gowns.

One more first: in 2013 Sadie Robertson showed a prom collection she co-designed with Sherri Hill, "Live Original by Sherri Hill," at New York Fashion Week. It was a one-time collaboration, not a standing line.

For several years Sherri Hill also gave prom dresses away, a lot of them. She supplied gowns for USO Operation: That's My Dress, events where teens from military families picked out a new prom or formal dress at no cost. In April 2014 the USO wrote that she had been part of every event so far and had donated more than $1 million in apparel. The events moved around. New York hosted them in 2014 and again during Fleet Week in 2015, and about 400 teens came to the 2014 event in Jacksonville. Austin's Camp Mabry hosted a national event too. In 2018 the program came to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, and a base newspaper that year put Hill's total at $8 million in new dresses since the events began about five years earlier. That 2018 event is the last one on record.