Lilli and Norman Claverie opened Chez Lilli — “at the house of Lilli” — in 1964. Lilli died about a year later. Norman kept the shop going, and after he remarried in 1966 his wife Beulah ran it and grew it into four Houma stores by the mid-1980s: Main, Barrow and St. Charles streets and Grand Caillou Road. Then the oil industry collapsed and took the local economy with it. The four were consolidated into one in 1987, and that one moved to 6114 West Park Avenue, where it still is. She sold the business to Laura and Harold Cancienne in 1998. All of that comes from a 2009 profile in the Houma Times, in which she said that of the many bridal shops operating in Terrebonne in the 1980s, about three were left. The store now describes itself as family owned and more than sixty years into selling formalwear in south Louisiana.
The stretch of road it sits on
West Park Avenue is LA 24, running along Bayou Terrebonne opposite West Main Street. Chez Lilli shares this stretch with Southland Mall at 5953 West Park, which means both ways to buy a prom dress in Houma sit within a two-minute drive of each other: Dillard’s, American Eagle and Aeropostale inside the mall, an independent formal shop up the road. During Carnival, the west Houma parade route forms up at Southland Mall and rolls down Park Avenue past the store.
Prom labels
Alyce Paris and Dave & Johnny both list this store on their official retailer locators. The shop’s own prom page adds Primavera, Cecilia Couture, Juliet, Lucci Lu and Nox Anabel, and says some label collections can only be seen in store. The menswear side is a Jim’s Formal Wear affiliate, which is worth knowing if a tuxedo rental and a gown need to happen on the same trip.
Who it serves, and when
Terrebonne Parish proms fall late for the Deep South. The Terrebonne High calendar puts its prom on Saturday, May 2, 2026, from 8 to 11 p.m. at the Barry P. Bonvillain Civic Center — the same building that hosts krewe tableaux and balls in January and February. A Houma teenager can end up buying two formal gowns in one school year, and a store that sells both Carnival gowns and prom dresses is built around that calendar rather than a single April weekend.
Schools within an easy drive of the door:
- Terrebonne High, 7318 Main Street — the other side of the bayou, about a mile away
- Vandebilt Catholic, 209 S. Hollywood Road — straight down Hollywood from Park Avenue
- H. L. Bourgeois High, Reservation Drive in Gray — out toward US 90
- Ellender Memorial High, Patriot Drive in east Houma
- South Terrebonne High, 3879 LA 24 in Bourg — same highway, downstream
Vandebilt reports that about one in eight of its students lives in Lafourche Parish, and Thibodaux is 18 miles up LA 24, so the trade area reaches well past the parish line into Raceland, Lockport and the lower bayou communities.
Before you drive over
Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 to 5 on Friday, 10 to 4 on Saturday, closed Sunday. Saturday is the short day, which matters if you are coming up from Chauvin or Montegut — leave after lunch and you have a couple of hours. Appointments can be booked by phone at (985) 868-3874 or through the store’s website. The nearest alternatives of any size are in Thibodaux, 18 miles north, and metro New Orleans, about 60 miles and an hour and a quarter each way on US 90.