Most prom stores in New England hand you a booking link and a slot three weeks out. This one does not take appointments at all. You drive to Hudson, go up to the second floor of the brick mill at 43 Broad Street, follow the signs, and put your name on the fitting-room list. During prom season, which the store counts as February through May, fitting-room time is capped at 40 minutes. You can carry in four dresses at a time and swap them out while you are in there. If 40 minutes is not enough, you go back on the waitlist.
The reason the store can run that way is that the showroom is attached to an online business, not the other way around. Marissa Tilley opened Lady Black Tie in November 2018 as a small shop in Andover with three dressing rooms. The website went up two months later, online orders took over, and the company moved its showroom and main operations to Hudson, in central Massachusetts, in August 2021. Trade coverage in early 2023 reported 66,500 dresses sold across the business in 2022, an 84% jump over the prior year, with more than 12,000 square feet of warehouse space behind the retail floor. Inc. listed the company as a 2023 Inc. 5000 honoree.
What is on the floor
The verified label list here is Amarra, Ashley Lauren, Ava Presley and Jovani. The store stocks sizes 00 through 24, though which sizes exist in which style depends on the week. Dresses sell off the rack, so you leave with the gown in the car rather than waiting on a special order — which is the main practical argument for the drive. What the store will not promise is that a specific dress you saw online is hanging in Hudson; in-store stock rotates and the site is much deeper than the floor. Email ahead if you are coming for one particular style, and email ahead if you are bringing a bridal party, since most floor-length bridal gowns are online-only.
Settle these before you get in the car
- Open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 11–5, Saturday 10–4. Closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
- In-store purchases and special orders are final sale. No layaway.
- No alterations in-house. The staff keeps a list of local seamstresses to hand out.
- No rentals, and no school registry — the store points out that most schools now track who bought what through their own class social media groups.
- No food or drink on the sales floor. There is a spot to leave it.
The building, and the two blocks around it
43 Broad Street is The Landing at Hudson Mills, a restored brick-and-beam mill from Hudson’s shoe-manufacturing years, sitting between the Assabet River and the Assabet River Rail Trail. The tenant list runs from medical offices to a yoga studio to a CrossFit gym, and the Hudson Historical Society keeps its museum on the fourth floor. Downtown is a short walk: Main Street’s restaurants, brewery and ice cream shop are the obvious way to fill the gap while someone else’s name is ahead of yours on the fitting-room list. Hudson won the 2021 America’s Main Streets contest run by Independent We Stand, beating out more than 200 entrants. The town is about 30 miles west of Boston, reached on Route 62 or Route 85 with I-495 close by, and the rail trail runs four and a half miles south into Marlborough.
Who shops here
Hudson High School is a mile and a half away on Brigham Street. Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School, in Marlborough, pulls its students from Berlin, Hudson, Marlborough, Maynard, Northborough, Southborough and Westborough, with seats also going to Boylston, Clinton, Leicester, Shrewsbury and Sudbury — which is a fair sketch of the everyday trade area right there. But Tilley has said the store’s reach is much wider than that, with customers driving one to two hours each way.
“We’re in the center of the state here. We get girls from north, south, east, and west coming to us.”
Which is worth knowing when you plan the day. A Saturday in March at 10 a.m. is the same idea everyone else in eastern Massachusetts had. A Wednesday afternoon in January is not.