Silhouette opened in 2023, which makes it one of the newer formalwear stores in upper Montgomery County. The person running it is not new to the work. Owner Farah Abazary learned the craft from her mother, a designer, and was making gowns professionally before she moved to the United States in 2014. She started Farah Couture LLC and worked as a master seamstress for bridal boutiques around the D.C. area before opening her own store here. The store puts her experience in design, customization and alterations at more than 30 years.
That is the practical reason to consider this shop over a mall chain or a website. Alterations are done in house by her team, and the store takes alteration appointments through the same online booking system it uses for dress appointments. For a prom dress bought in March that needs a hem, a taken-in bodice and a bra cup sewn in before the dance, the tailoring decides how the dress looks, and here it is not farmed out to a shop across town.
The brands, and what else is on the racks
Four labels list this store on their own official retailer locators: Alyce Paris, Clarisse, Jovani and Terani. Silhouette’s own catalog runs wider than prom — separate collections for homecoming, pageant, quinceañera, cocktail, mothers of the bride and groom, bridesmaids and bridal, including Morilee wedding gowns.
Pageant and quinceañera racks in the same room as prom is not an accident of merchandising in this city. Gaithersburg is the third-most-populous city in Maryland, and its Hispanic population reached 28.5 percent in the 2020 census, up from 24.2 percent a decade earlier. A shop that can fit a 15-gown and a prom gown, and alter both, is doing business the way the neighborhood actually works.
The schools this store sits between
Quince Orchard High is the closest, a few minutes north on Quince Orchard Road with roughly 2,100 students. Gaithersburg High, on Education Boulevard on the far side of I-270, is bigger at about 2,400 and has been a school in this town since 1904. Watkins Mill is across the city, and Northwest is up in Germantown on Richter Farm Road. All four are Montgomery County Public Schools, all four hold prom in the spring, and none of them is a long drive from Arch Place.
Planning the visit
Arch Place is a short street in the Kentlands, the walkable planned neighborhood on the west side of Gaithersburg, off Quince Orchard Road and a couple of minutes from I-270. Parking is street and surface lots, and Kentlands Market Square and its restaurants are in the same neighborhood, which helps if a first appointment runs long or a parent needs somewhere to sit.
The store is closed Mondays and open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a shorter Sunday. Its two websites disagree on when Sunday ends — one says 4 p.m., the other 5 — so call before a Sunday drive. Dress appointments and alteration appointments are both booked online.
One thing that trips people up: the business now brands itself as Silhouette Dresses, and the older Silhouette Bridal & Formal web address forwards to the new one. Same shop, same phone number, same Arch Place address.