Most prom shopping in northeastern Pennsylvania happens in stores built for exactly one customer: a seventeen-year-old in April. Rain Tree is not that kind of store. It is a women’s clothing boutique on North Washington Avenue in downtown Scranton that sells sportswear and separates from labels like Joseph Ribkoff, Elliott Lauren, Drew and White + Warren, plus formalwear for weddings and proms and dresses for the mother of the bride or groom. The prom gowns hang in a store where grown women buy clothes they wear to work.
That has practical consequences. Rain Tree keeps a seamstress on site, which is the part of prom shopping that actually determines how a dress looks in photographs — a strapless bodice that needs taking in, a hem cut for heels rather than flats, a bust adjustment on a beaded gown. Shops that carry mother-of-the-bride alongside prom tend to be set up for real alterations rather than a pin-and-hope. It also means a mother and daughter shopping for the same May weekend can do it in one stop.
The three prom labels here
- Jovani — the label most people picture when they picture a prom dress: fitted, heavily beaded, high slit, plenty of sequins. Widely worn, so worth asking what the store has that the rest of the grade will not.
- Dave & Johnny — younger and simpler in cut, generally the more restrained end of a prom rack.
- Colette — special-occasion gowns from the Mon Cheri house, closer to a ballgown or evening-dress silhouette.
Those three are confirmed through the brands’ own retailer listings. What is actually hanging on the rack in any given February is a different question, and only a phone call answers it.
Who ends up here
North Washington Avenue puts the store within a few minutes of most of the Lackawanna Valley’s high schools. Scranton High and West Scranton High are both inside the city, and Scranton Preparatory School is a short walk up the hill from downtown. Ring the city and the list keeps going: Dunmore, Holy Cross, Riverside, Old Forge, Mid Valley in Throop, Valley View in Archbald, Abington Heights up in Clarks Summit, Lakeland in Jermyn, North Pocono out toward Moscow. None of those trips is long. A downtown location is a genuine advantage in a valley where the school districts are packed in this tightly, because nobody has to drive past three other towns to get here.
It also means the shopping trip is a downtown errand rather than a mall trip. Courthouse Square and the restaurants along Spruce and Linden are right there, and the Marketplace at Steamtown is a few blocks toward the river.
Before going
There is no website on file for Rain Tree. The store’s online presence is a Facebook page, and hours are not published anywhere that can be trusted, so the number to call is (570) 344-5099. Worth asking on that call: whether the prom gowns are in yet, whether they log which dress went to which school so two girls do not turn up in the same gown, how far ahead the seamstress books in March and April, and what alterations cost on top of the dress.
Address: 116 N Washington Ave, Scranton, PA 18503.