On the last Sunday of July 2019, fire ran through a plaza on Route 224 in Canfield. Mahoning County firefighters traced the start to the area behind a lighted sign for Sunkiss Tanning, and the blaze took out half the strip — the tanning salon, RP Motors, Hair Hut and Toula’s Bridal. Crews carried gowns out of the dress shop and believed they saved most of them. Toula’s had been in that space for more than 30 years.
It reopened about six months later, just east on the same road, at 4137 Boardman-Canfield Road, Suite 101. Owner Toula Kostoglou told the local press the move was unexpected but that she liked the new space. The shop marked the reopening in February 2020 with a mother-daughter prom night and a Mac Duggal trunk show, with a half-off in-stock gown as the prize.
One practical note before you drive out: the pre-fire street number, 4373, still sits in a lot of listings, including some brand locators and review sites. The number that appears on the shop’s current Better Business Bureau file and on Faviana’s retailer page is 4137. Same road, same phone — (330) 533-2967 — a short distance apart. Call first and confirm which door you want.
The prom labels that list this store
- Jovani
- Mac Duggal
- Alyce Paris
- Colette
- Faviana
- Dave & Johnny
Those six each name Toula’s on their own retailer locators. It is also a working bridal salon, which is why the shop turns up on bridesmaid and bridal-gown locators alongside the prom lines — if you go in during February, you will be sharing the floor with brides. The owner does alterations herself; one reviewer on The Knot credited her with taking a junior bridesmaid dress apart and ordering extra fabric to make it fit.
Who shops here
Canfield High School is about two miles west, on Cardinal Drive, with 733 students in grades 9–12 in 2024–25. That is a small senior class, and it is not the only one in range. Boardman-Canfield Road is US 224, the retail spine that runs east from Canfield through Boardman past Southern Park Mall, which puts Boardman, Poland Seminary, Austintown Fitch, Cardinal Mooney, Ursuline, South Range, Struthers, Campbell Memorial, Lowellville, Jackson-Milton and Springfield Local all within a reasonable drive. Austintown Fitch alone runs around 1,235 students; the Poland district has about 1,755.
Prom in the Valley tends to land in early May — when Mahoning Matters ran its guide to free and low-cost prom dresses in the first week of April 2022, it described prom as roughly a month out for several area schools. Dress shopping here starts well before that, in January and February, which is when trunk shows and appointment slots fill.
The nearby competition is mostly bridal-first: Jacqueline’s Bridal in Poland, Evaline’s in Warren. For prom specifically, Treasured Moments Bridal & Formal on Boardman-Poland Road carries a different designer roster, including Sherri Hill and Jonathan Kayne. If none of the Valley shops has the dress, the next real options are the Cleveland and Pittsburgh metros, and that is a full day rather than an errand.