One phone number, 845-783-6053, rings for two very different stores at 186 Route 17M, Suite 3. One of them is Harriman Army–Navy, which sells work pants, rugged footwear and police and EMS uniforms. The other is Harriman Clothing Co., a special-occasion dress salon carrying Faviana, La Femme and Colette in sizes 00 through 24, petites included. Drivers who have passed the army-navy sign for years without knowing there were prom gowns behind it are not unusual.
The company describes itself as family owned since 1971, and says its owner trained at F.I.T. and at the Traphagen School of Fashion in New York. The dress side covers prom, sweet sixteen, homecoming, bridesmaids, mother-of-the-bride and cocktail; a separate everyday apparel department handles tops, denim, shoes and jewelry. Shoes and accessories sit in the same building as the gowns, which matters when the dress is chosen and the shoes still are not.
Where this puts you in southern Orange County
Harriman is a village of roughly 2,700 people packed into about one square mile of Orange County, and its name is attached to the exit everybody in the region uses: Exit 16 of the Thruway, where I-87 meets Route 17. The Town of Woodbury next door bills itself as the gateway to Orange County for exactly that reason. Woodbury Common Premium Outlets is at the same interchange, so a gown appointment and a shoe hunt can be one trip rather than two. The Metro-North station on Route 17 in Harriman sits on the Port Jervis line, with a lot big enough for nearly a thousand cars.
Monroe-Woodbury High School, on Dunderberg Road in Central Valley, is the nearest large public high school and runs separate junior and senior proms — two dress occasions in the same school year for a lot of families here. About eight miles south down Route 17, Tuxedo’s George F. Baker High School serves grades 6 through 12 with fewer than a hundred students total, plus tuition students from surrounding districts; in a senior class that size, a dress nobody else has is a real consideration.
Alterations run on a narrow schedule
Fittings are done in-house, but only on two days. The store’s alterations calendar lists Tuesday and Thursday, noon to 6 p.m., by appointment only, and no other day of the week. It asks for four weeks between the first fitting and the pickup fitting, and warns that intricate work may need more than one visit in between. First fittings run about an hour. Pricing is quoted only after a specialist sees the gown on the body, because fabric and construction decide how hard the job is.
What to bring to that first fitting, per the store’s own instructions:
- The bra or bras you plan to wear with the dress
- A slip
- Shapewear
- The actual shoes, not a stand-in of a different heel height
Regular hours are 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9:30 to 5 on Saturday, closed Sunday. Special-occasion shopping is booked through the store’s appointment system, so calling ahead is the difference between a fitting room and a browse. The holiday closures include Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, both of which land in the middle of prom and graduation season — worth checking the date before making the drive.