Jovani, Mac Duggal, Terani and Dave & Johnny all list 71-47 Austin Street on their own retailer locators. That is four prom-and-evening houses inside one Forest Hills storefront, on a shopping street you can walk end to end in about ten minutes. None of the four is a bridal label — this is a formal-gown store, not a wedding store, though the Terani and Mac Duggal racks are the kind people also shop for weddings and galas. Dave & Johnny is the junior-market name of the group.
The shop signs itself Chez Moi Studio and turns up in some directories as Chez Moir; the phone number is the same either way. Its Better Business Bureau profile lists a business start date of 1979, and a Dun & Bradstreet entry puts women’s ready-to-wear at this address from 1978. Its Facebook page marks the price range as two dollar signs.
Nobody drives to this one
The 71st Avenue–Continental Avenue station is around the corner on Queens Boulevard, and it is a four-line stop: E, F, M and R, with the E and F running express. The Long Island Rail Road’s Forest Hills station is a block away on Continental. The Q23, Q60, Q64 and Q74 all come through. For a family in Rego Park, Kew Gardens, Middle Village or Elmhurst, that means a gown trip with no parking to solve, which is the whole argument for shopping here instead of taking the same subway line into Midtown. Austin Street is a working commercial corridor, so the trip absorbs lunch and shoes without a second stop; this is one of the easier gown addresses to reach anywhere in New York.
Whose proms these are
Forest Hills High School is about a mile north at 67-01 110th Street, with roughly 3,400 students — one of the largest high schools in Queens, per InsideSchools. Queens Metropolitan High School, also in Forest Hills, enrolls around 1,070. Archbishop Molloy in Briarwood runs about 1,500, and The Kew-Forest School sits a short walk from Austin Street. That is several thousand juniors and seniors inside a few subway stops of the front door, which is why a shop this size can hold four gown lines at once.
Before you go
Read the reviews first, because they are genuinely split. Yelp carries 76 of them. The recurring praise is about staff pulling dresses in a customer’s actual size rather than sending her to the rack — one reviewer describes being brought “several gorgeous choices, all in my size.” The recurring complaints are about alterations and about feeling rushed on the floor. Reviewers also refer to an upstairs sales area used for mother-of-the-bride and occasion dresses, and to alterations being handled on site.
Two practical things follow from that. If you are having work done, get the price and the pickup date written on the receipt before any deposit changes hands. And ask about returns and exchanges out loud, since no policy is posted in any of the store’s listings. Yelp shows the store open seven days — weekday evenings to 7, Friday and Saturday to 7:30, Sunday 11 to 6 — but listed hours drift, so call (718) 520-0900 before you make the trip in March or April.