Unique Lady Bridal and Prom

Viromia Matti could not speak a word of English when she opened Unique Lady in Oak Park. What she could do was build formal wear by hand, well enough to keep customers coming back. Her daughters, Donna and Ranee, were still teenagers then. They translated for their mother and spent hours at a time hand-beading gowns. Years later the sisters took the business over and turned a custom dress shop into a full boutique, and today it sits on Southfield Road, one city over from Oak Park, where it began.

That history still shows in how the store talks about prom. Unique Lady calls itself a Top 10 Prom store and the best source for prom and wedding dresses in Michigan, and it backs the claim with volume: thousands of prom dresses in stock, in what the website describes as endless styles and colors, all of them factory authorized and authentic. The Southfield location has recently been upgraded, and prom comes first on its menu.

The prom lines on the floor

The store's prom menu reads like a who's who of the labels students screenshot all winter, led by the core names the sisters single out on the homepage.

Prices on the featured ASHLEYlauren gowns alone run from the low $200s to roughly $1,500, which gives a sense of the spread. A homecoming dress or a simple satin prom gown sits at one end; a fully embellished Portia & Scarlett couture piece sits at the other. The sisters also say they have partnered with some of the top prom designers on styles carried exclusively in Michigan, which is a draw for students who want something classmates will not have seen online.

Curvy shoppers are not an afterthought here. The website's own line on it is "Need curvy plus sizes? we've got them." The online size filter runs from 000 up through 32W, and the store carries a separate curve collection, Sydney's Closet by Johnathan Kayne, alongside the plus sizes cut by the main prom labels. Quinceañera has its own corner too, with Alyce Paris and Vizcaya by Mori Lee.

Services that make the season easier

A few things on the store's list matter more to a prom family than they might to a bride.

• In-house alterations

  Hemming and fitting on dresses bought at the store

• Layaway

  Up to the event with 35 percent down, plus other flexible payment options

• Tuxedo rentals

  Added because so many prom customers kept asking for them

• Shipping

  Online orders through FedEx, UPS and the Postal Service, with insurance and tracking available

The store also keeps later evening hours every Monday through Saturday from February through May, the stretch when prom shopping peaks. Shipping has grown into a business of its own. Ranee has said that if someone had told her five years earlier that women all over the country would be ordering dresses from them online, she would have thought they were crazy. Most orders still go to customers in the United States, but Canada is a big share, since the store sits only a few miles from the border, and the occasional order from as far as Australia still surprises the sisters.

For local students, the store is easy to reach from several districts. Southfield High School for the Arts and Technology is the city's public high school, Oak Park High School is next door to the east, and Berkley High School is a few minutes beyond that. Northwest Detroit is just across Eight Mile, and Southfield Road runs north toward Birmingham for families coming down from that side. Bridal and bridesmaid gowns share the floor, along with gowns for mothers, but the store's own homepage puts prom first.

The store's founding story ends on a line from Donna, and it explains why a shop that began in one tiny room in southeast Michigan still feels family-run.

“Our success comes from loving the business,” said Donna. “We’ve put our heart and soul into Unique Lady and I think people appreciate that.”

The store's founding story

What Southfield families ask Unique Lady

Does Unique Lady rent tuxedos for prom dates?

Yes. The store added tuxedo rentals specifically because prom customers kept asking for them, so a couple can sort out the gown and the tux at one counter.

How does the Unique Lady layaway work?

Put 35 percent down and the store holds the dress for you up to the date of your event. That lets a family settle on a gown early and spread the cost out before prom.