Becky Fairchild opened the shop in a former drugstore in 1982. At the time it was the only property available on Sycamore or Magnolia, the two streets that run the length of downtown. She started out selling sweaters, skirts and accessories; in her second year of business she saw a rack of prom dresses at market, picked eight styles, and told the vendor she wanted one dress in one size and one color. The store is still at 2127 Magnolia Avenue, in the 2100 block that the National Register lists as the Buena Vista Downtown Historic District, at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
The age is not the interesting part. What is interesting is what happened around it. When the Roanoke Times profiled the store in its 37th year, it described a downtown that had largely emptied out — the hardware stores, groceries and drugstores gone, much of it after repeated flooding — with Becky’s still open and still doing prom. Her husband John joined the shop full time after retiring from an engineering career. The same story found a Parry McCluer senior who was the third daughter in her family to buy prom and homecoming dresses there; her mother had first come in to try on wedding gowns.
Who actually drives here
Buena Vista has one high school. Parry McCluer enrolls roughly 314 students across grades 8 through 12, nowhere near enough to support a formalwear store by itself. The shop’s prom business comes in from Rockbridge, Alleghany, Botetourt, Augusta, Amherst, Roanoke and Appomattox counties. Rockbridge County High School on Greenhouse Road, the county’s only high school at about 916 students, is the largest single school in that radius.
Magnolia Avenue is US 501 Business through downtown; Buena Vista sits where US 501 meets US 60, which is 29th Street in town. Distances worth knowing before committing to the trip:
- Lexington: about 7 miles, roughly 10 minutes straight out US 60.
- Roanoke: about 56 miles, close to an hour, most of it I-81.
Labels and services
Jovani, Alyce Paris, Colette and Jasz each list this store on their official retailer locators. The shop’s own site shows more prom and formal collections beyond those — Primavera, Ellie Wilde, Rachel Allan, JVN, Faviana, Tiffany Designs and Panoply among them — and Faviana names Buena Vista on its own dealer pages. Stock turns over by season, so a specific dress is a phone call, not an assumption.
Tuxedos are handled here too: the store is a Jim’s Formal Wear affiliate, which covers rentals for a whole prom group in one stop. Virginia Tourism’s listing notes that alterations are done on the premises, which matters more than it sounds when the alternative is a second and third drive to Lexington or Roanoke for fittings.
Prom season at Becky’s starts in January. The shop works by appointment; call before making the drive.