Most prom shops sell you a gown and then hand you a list of tailors. At 263 Brick Blvd, Suite 3, the tailor owns the store. Mona Malaty is the seamstress as well as the buyer, and the shop’s own material describes the whole sequence happening in one place: take the measurements, fit the gown, add an off-the-shoulder sleeve or a belt if the dress needs one, pull jewelry, a clutch or long gloves to go with it, then take the gown back in after the dance to be cleaned.
That is the reason to know about this place. A dress that needs three inches off the hem and a bodice taken in is not a problem you have to solve somewhere else, and nobody is guessing at what the original seamstress intended, because she is the same person.
Two prom labels here are confirmed on the brands’ own retailer lists: Terani Couture and Colette. Both are long, built, formal-gown lines rather than fast-fashion racks. The shop also carries bridal, mother- and grandmother-of-the-bride and -groom, homecoming, and eighth-grade formal gowns, and rents and sells tuxedos — Lord West, After Six, Jean Yves, Ike Behar and others appear in its look book. If a couple needs a gown and a tux for the same Saturday, that is one stop.
Whose prom this is
Brick Township runs two comprehensive high schools, and they are each other’s rival. Brick Township High School sits on Chambers Bridge Road with about 1,200 students; Brick Memorial is on Lanes Mill Road with about 1,269. Green Dragons and Mustangs, two separate proms, one township, and one shop on the boulevard that runs between them. Add Lake Riviera Middle School on Beaverson Boulevard and the rest of the district’s middle schools, and eighth-grade formal season lands here too — which is why a store this size stocks for it at all.
Brick Boulevard is County Route 549. It crosses Route 70 at the township’s main retail intersection and runs north to the Garden State Parkway; Route 88 comes in from Lakewood and heads east toward Point Pleasant. If you live anywhere in northern Ocean County — Brick, Point Pleasant, Lakewood, Toms River, the bayfront neighborhoods, Normandy Beach across the bay — you already drive this stretch. The shop is a storefront suite in that commercial run, not a mall unit. Park at the door.
Before you drive over
- Call first: (732) 477-0045. Published hours differ from one online listing to the next, and this is a one-woman operation, so the phone is more reliable than any directory.
- Ask about alteration timing when you buy, not after. A gown that needs real reconstruction takes bench time, and February through April is when every bride, bridesmaid and prom customer in the township wants the same weeks.
- This is a small floor, not a warehouse. Come knowing roughly what silhouette you want, or come early enough in the season to order.