Ellen Mekles opened Party Girl in 1997 after finding almost nowhere in eastern Bergen County that made custom dresses for preteens and juniors. Girls that age were being sent to children’s departments or to grown-women’s racks. The shop she built to fill that gap still works the same way: girls’ sizes 7 to 16, with custom sizing for anyone outside that range, and an in-house designer, Aviva, who will draw a dress from scratch.
That is an unusual starting point for a store on a prom directory, and it shapes what a senior should expect. Jovani and Terani both list Party Girl on their official retailer locators, so the prom and evening gowns are real. But the store’s own catalog runs through bat mitzvah, sweet sixteen, quinceañera, communion, flower girl, and graduation dresses, and the reviews people leave online are overwhelmingly about mothers bringing a seventh-grader in for a bat mitzvah dress and working directly with Ellen. This is a fitting-and-sewing operation with prom gowns in it, not a warehouse of prom gowns.
The no-duplicates rule, and why it matters here
Party Girl tracks who has ordered what so it does not sell the same dress twice. In a bigger market that would be a marketing line. In Tenafly it is a practical service. Tenafly High School enrolled 1,166 students in 2023–24, Cresskill High School fewer than 500, and Northern Valley Regional at Demarest just over a thousand a few minutes up Knickerbocker Road. The same girls turn up at the same b’nai mitzvah weekends, the same Kaplen JCC programs on East Clinton Avenue, and the same receptions at the Clinton Inn. The odds of a repeat dress are not theoretical.
Timing
North Jersey prom runs late. Tenafly High’s senior events calendar has put the senior prom in the first week of June, with graduation two weeks behind it — roughly a month after schools in the South are finished. The store asks shoppers to start looking about six months out and to allow twelve weeks for a custom order, which puts a serious February deadline on a June prom. Off-the-rack pieces can go home the same day, though some styles have to be ordered in.
Before the trip
- By appointment only, seven days a week. There is no browsing hour.
- No alterations on site. The shop refers customers to a local seamstress, so budget for that separately.
- Shoes are part of the business, so a head-to-toe fitting is possible in one visit.
- Growth spurts are planned for and handled through the same seamstress — worth raising at the first fitting for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old.
Finding it
Riveredge Road is one of the downtown blocks, in a business district with no chain anchors — boutiques, salons, delis, and small restaurants within a few hundred feet. A commercial listing for the address describes a corner storefront with parking in the rear lot. Two address warnings: older directory pages still show Party Girl at 1 Highwood Avenue, a block away, and the store’s own contact page lists an Englewood Cliffs address in the footer while its embedded map points to Riveredge Road. The Riveredge address is the one on the store’s recent social posts. Confirm it on the phone when booking the appointment.
For anyone comparing options: Jovani’s New Jersey retailer list also names JaeHee Bridal in Englewood, immediately south, The Fig Leaf Boutique in Maywood, and Gattinoli in Ridgewood. Party Girl is the closest of them to the Northern Valley towns, and the only one built around junior and preteen sizing.