Saturday morning at a dress emporium in the Midlands, and dozens of excitable young women — here strictly by appointment only — are waiting to be measured up in one of the store’s ten fitting rooms.
Around them are rails of eye-catching frocks covered in ruffles , sequins and diamante. As they browse, the air is filled with excitable talk of hairstyles, fake tans, make-up and jewellery.
It’s familiar territory, of course, for anyone who has accompanied a daughter, sister or friend to a bridal fitting — but these young women are 15 and 16-year-old schoolgirls and are not getting married any time soon.
Belles of the ball: Girls from Morley High School head off to their prom in a stretch limo
Instead, they have arrived at the Fashion Factory in Cannock, Staffordshire, to be kitted out for their annual school prom. It’s an expensive business: by the time they’ve left, their mothers will have shelled out an average of £250 on that special dress, as well as committing to hundreds of pounds more for hairdressing, professional make-up and limousine hire.
It may all sound terribly un-British but make no mistake, the high-school prom, once the preserve of Hollywood movies, is fast becoming big business here.
Inspired by films like High School Musical and the television show Glee, British teens are no longer content with the traditional end-of-term school disco and a plastic cup of lemonade to mark the end of their senior school years.
Instead the majority of state and independent secondary schools now celebrate the occasion in swish hotel function rooms with the graduating year walking down red carpets in designer dresses.
‘The mums all come in with a figure in mind but that usually goes out the window when they see how lovely their daughter looks in the dress she’s set her heart on.’
Such is the phenomenon’s iron grip on the British teen’s imagination that a new word has entered the lexicon: the Promzilla, a particular kind of prom-obsessed adolescent.
There’s certainly no shortage of them at the Fashion Factory on any given Saturday. Previously a standard ladies and gents clothing emporium, in a matter of three years the store has gone from selling prom dresses as a small sideline to devoting more than half its 4,000 square foot of floor space to an orgy of silk, satin and net.
This year they are on course to sell 3,000 outfits to the young women and their mothers who have travelled from all over the country to source the perfect outfit.
Like a peculiar hybrid of a B&Q warehouse and a giant Barbie’s wardrobe, it is overseen by manager Christine Roland, who runs such a tight ship that every single dress that is sold is registered so that no two girls (heaven forbid!) will attend their school prom looking the same.
‘The prom frenzy is incredible,’ she says.
‘We’ve already got girls coming in to book their prom dresses for summer 2012.
'It’s a fabulous experience for them. We say it’s like the X Factor. The mums all sit in a row outside the changing rooms, and the girls all parade and get a “yes” or “no”.’
Certainly, the recession seems a distant thing here — Christine tells me that two £550 ‘high-end’ dresses ordered in especially from the U.S. last month, to test the water, sold within two days. She’s now placed a rush order for dozens more. The prom dress purchase, it seems, is something of a budget-blowing experience.
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