One dress per style. That was the order Becky Fairchild placed in her second year on Magnolia Avenue, when the shop she opened in 1982 inside a former drugstore was still selling sweaters, skirts and accessories. She had spotted a selection of prom gowns while buying inventory, picked out eight styles, and told the vendor exactly how many of each she wanted.
"I want one dress, in one color, in one size. And that's it."
That is how she recounted the moment to The Roanoke Times, which profiled the shop in its 37th year. The vendor thought the order made no sense. She hung a sign in the window that read simply "Prom," and the eight dresses were gone within the week. Prom has been the backbone of Becky's Bridal & Formals ever since, and the store has stayed on the same downtown street in the Rockbridge County area of western Virginia since 1982.
A rule born at a Parry McCluer prom
The one-of-each idea had a personal root. Becky went to her own senior prom at Parry McCluer High School in the 1960s in a white dress with a turquoise bow on the back. When she arrived, a friend told her not to turn around. Another girl was wearing the exact same gown.
She never forgot it, and the paper reported that she still runs the floor around that memory.
In a town with one public high school, and with shoppers arriving from schools across the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge, that promise carries real weight. It is the closest thing the shop has to a slogan.
Prom season here opens in January. The Roanoke Times found students coming from Rockbridge, Alleghany, Botetourt, Augusta, Amherst, Roanoke and Appomattox counties to shop the racks. Closer to home, that means juniors and seniors from Parry McCluer in Buena Vista, from Rockbridge County High School over in Lexington, and from Amherst County High School on the far side of the Blue Ridge. Families from those schools know the drill: start looking after the holidays, come back when new styles arrive, and let Becky weigh in before you commit.
What hangs on the formal racks
The shop's own website lists the formal collections it carries, and the prom side is deep for a store in a small Valley city:
- Jovani and its younger JVN line
- Alyce Paris
- Primavera Couture
- Ellie Wilde
- Rachel Allan
- Tiffany Designs and Panoply from the House of Wu family
- Faviana
Accessories come from Jim Ball and Benjamin Walk, so jewelry and shoes can be settled at the counter. The site also names pageant gowns as part of the business. A bridal side with Maggie Sottero and Rebecca Ingram serves the brides who come back years later.
The website frames it in one line: for nearly 40 years, clients have come "from near and far" for wedding dresses, prom attire and pageant gowns. It also sets the tone of a visit, saying Becky is dedicated to making everyone who enters "be fabulous."
Why families keep coming back to Magnolia Avenue
The newspaper story spent as much time on the people as on the dresses. Becky's husband John joined the shop full time after retiring from an engineering career. A longtime neighbor described how local girls first come in for a middle school dance dress or to be a junior bridesmaid, return for every homecoming and every prom, and eventually come back as brides with daughters of their own. One family the paper followed was on its third daughter buying prom and homecoming gowns at the store, after the mother had first met Becky while trying on wedding dresses.
There is a story about the town in there too. When the Maury River flooded downtown in November 1985, about 40 neighbors showed up in the dark to carry the stock upstairs and into their own homes, and the shop lost nothing. Becky calls that spirit the "BV backbone," and she told the paper she has never once thought about moving off Magnolia Avenue.
For a prom shopper, that history translates into something simple: the person helping you choose remembers what your school's girls wore last spring.
Questions Buena Vista shoppers ask about Becky's
When should we start shopping for prom at Becky's?
The shop's prom season starts in January, right after the holidays, and new styles keep arriving through the spring, so early shoppers see the most options and can stop back as fresh gowns come in.
Will someone else from my school end up in the same dress?
Not if you buy it here. The Roanoke Times reported that Becky will not sell the same style to two girls from the same school, a policy she has kept since the shop started carrying prom gowns.