This is one of the older retail stories in southeastern Massachusetts. A local history account of Taunton’s School Street Village traces the business to Pincus Zwetchkenbaum, a Polish immigrant who sold lace and calico from a cart before opening a shop with his son Joseph in the Whittenton section of the city in 1906. The store moved downtown, and in 1935 it landed at 89 Main Street as the New York Lace Store. It is still there. The shop’s own Facebook page calls it the longest-running family-owned bridal boutique in the country.
What that means for a teenager shopping for prom: this is a bridal salon that also does prom, not a prom store that also does bridal. The four labels verified on their own retailer locators are Jovani, Terani, Jessica Angel and MNM Couture — two of the biggest names in American prom, plus Jessica Angel’s fitted stretch and sequin styles and MNM’s evening-gown side. Expect a stylist pulling gowns for you rather than a wall of racks to comb through yourself.
Hours are the thing to plan around
The store is closed Monday and Tuesday, which surprises people who drive in on a day off. From the shop’s own posted hours:
- Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. — the only two evenings, and the realistic after-school slots
- Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: closed
Appointments are requested, and the shop takes texts at the same number it takes calls. Book the Wednesday or Thursday evening early in the season, because those two nights carry all the after-school demand for a city this size.
Who walks in
Taunton High is the biggest feeder, and Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical sits across town on Hart Street with about 1,330 students drawn from Berkley, Bridgewater, Dighton, Freetown, Middleboro, Raynham, Rehoboth and Taunton — eight towns’ worth of proms, all within a short drive of this block. Bridgewater-Raynham and Dighton-Rehoboth students are in the same orbit. There is no longer a Catholic option in the city: Coyle and Cassidy closed in 2020 and sent its high schoolers to Bishop Connolly in Fall River, and Connolly itself shut after the 2022-23 year.
Reviews left by brides regularly mention that their mothers, and in some cases their grandmothers, bought dresses here first, and that they had bought prom dresses here before they came back for a wedding gown. That continuity is the shop’s actual selling point, more than anything on its website.
Downtown, not a mall
89 Main Street is at the downtown end of things, near Taunton Green — the 1740s common at the center of the city’s National Register commercial district, and the same green that gets lit up every December in the tradition that earned Taunton the “Christmas City” name back in 1914. Parking is on-street. There is no mall alternative in town anymore: the Silver City Galleria off Route 24 closed in March 2020 and was demolished, with the site now going up as an industrial park. The nearest concentration of dress shops is Fall River, where South Main Street and Pleasant Street hold several large prom and bridal retailers, and after that Providence.
One more detail the shop advertises itself: its social accounts note an appearance on TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé.