Gown

For boys and girls in high school, proms are magical, creating for some perhaps their best memories of high school life. Proms also are among the biggest expenses of their high school years. Tuxedos, gowns, clothing accessories, tickets, flowers and photographs add up to quite a sum even without the costs of hired cars and after-prom parties After she totaled the expenses and shopped with her daughter Nicole for a gown last year, Lorri S. Antonelli of Media came up with a new business - prom-gown rentals.

Barbara Bush, saying, "I love this dress and I really hate to give it up," formally presented the sapphire-blue gown she wore to her husband's Inaugural ball last January to the Smithsonian Institution yesterday. Bush, wearing a purple knit dress by Arnold Scaasi, who also designed the gown, thanked him and hairdresser Yves Graux. Referring to her eye disorder, she praised them for making "me feel like I looked good. Everybody knows I've had a dumb year, with pop-eyes and all sorts of weird things.

A daring rescue may be at hand in the incredible true story of Nancy Reagan's Amazing Growing Gown. Nancy Reagan's swanky floor-length inaugural gown is now more than floor length. It's grown over the toes of her evening slippers. If you don't believe it, go see for yourself on the second floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. But, thanks largely to cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of the popular Doonesbury comic strip, and the generosity of a compassionate nation, help may be at hand.

Esther Payne Thorp, 88, a lifelong resident of North Wales and the retired owner of a gown shop, died Monday at the Suburban Woods rehabilitation center in East Norriton Township. As a dress designer, she had worked for Alfred Angelo, a well-known Philadelphia bridal gown retailer. She opened her own business, Gowns by Esther, on Walnut Street in North Wales in 1960 and operated the shop until retiring in 1991. Mrs. Thorp graduated from the former North Wales High School and from Philadelphia's Moore College of Art, where she majored in dress design.

It would be easy to say Kate Middleton's gorgeous, lacy Alexander McQueen bridal gown was like that of Philadelphia's own Grace Kelly. But then you wouldn't acknowledge how Middleton's timing makes her choice much more charming. She did, after all, don a modest ivory look after nearly two decades of brides in strapless, cleavage-baring, stark white dresses. Compared with other royal wedding examples, Middleton chose a shorter veil, and the borrowed-from-the-Queen tiara and the teardrop earrings by Robinson Pelham gave the look a classic, millennial twist.

The high school's annual prom fashion show had just ended when Mike Hightower strode to the front of the cafeteria at Rancocas Valley Regional and grabbed the disc jockey's microphone. "Excuse me, excuse me, can I have your attention please," the senior asked as he waited for the noisy lunchroom to become quiet. "I was wondering if Lynn Hoyer would like to go with me to the prom. " Off to the side of the room came a squeal of surprise from Hoyer, the class treasurer, followed by excited hugs from her friends.

Everything was going right for Nancy Gildein and her fiance, Charles Shustack, as they made final preparations for their July 30 wedding. A happy Gildein, 22, picked up her gown last week, taking care of one major chore. On Saturday, she placed the gown, her new luggage loaded with clothing and some cash in the back seat of her car before driving to her job on Frankford Avenue near Sellers Street in Frankford. She was going to drop off the gown and other items at her new apartment in the Ashton-Woodenbridge area after work.

One of the seven worst situations any woman can find herself in is the one where it's, say, less than 10 days before New Year's, or the cousin's wedding, or the company Christmas party, or maybe even her own wedding, and she's mushing frantically through the malls, hysteria mounting, because she absolutely has to find something to wear - now. One of the other seven, which usually results from the one above, is when she shows up at the whoop-de-doo in...

Britney, J. Lo, Christina Aguilera, even (gasp!) Star Jones. These red-carpet brides - and what they wear on their wedding day - are influencing women awaiting their turn in front of the paparazzi (er, wedding photographer). "A lot of what girls are looking at, unfortunately, is the red carpet. It can be good and tasteful. Or bad," says Juli Alvarez, fashion editor at Modern Bride magazine. Case in point is the celeb-inspired two-dress phenomenon: one gown for the ceremony, another for the reception.

When brides spend countless hours finding - and then fitting into - the perfect wedding dress, it's no wonder they eventually have that pricey number professionally cleaned and packed away for future family heirloom status. But more women are taking a decidedly different approach to preservation: trashing the dress, and documenting it. Whether it's days or years after the big bash, former brides are letting loose for edgy photo shoots in which the dress is trashed (by mud, grass, paint, water, urban grime, sand)

   Can someone please tell me what happened to E! Entertainment's red-carpet coverage Sunday night? Not only was Ryan Seacrest's hair too high, he all but disappeared during the last 45 minutes of red-carpet time. We were left with a photo montage of celebrities with much information missing, like who designed their dresses. Poor purple-haired Kelly Osbourne, diva has-been Kimora Lee Simmons, and the likable Giuliana Rancic were left filling the dead air with not much to go on. Maybe Seacrest got in trouble?

FOR NEARLY half a century, the signature sequined gowns and other lavish stage costumes belonging to 1960s Motown superstars the Supremes lay forgotten, boxed up and stacked in founding member Mary Wilson's various garages and storage spaces. Many were in excellent shape, though some outfits were deteriorating and others had gone missing. In hindsight, it's jaw-dropping that nobody had bothered to catalog and preserve it all, a situation that's been remedied in "Come See About Me: The Mary Wilson Supremes Collection," opening Friday and continuing through July at the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

To know Brenda Jones is to get hugged by her. What happens next, often, is you want to send her some fabric. She's the breast-cancer battler I wrote about three years ago whose anger at getting sick found a juicy target in those hideous, backless Johnny coats that hospitals make their patients wear. As she was recovering from radiation treatment, she learned to sew, well enough to start producing fanciful flannel gowns she calls Hug Wraps. She'd given away about 150 of them to fellow cancer patients when I first visited her home in Southampton, N.J., on the edge of the Pine Barrens.

Some Villanova alumni and fans, it seems, are acting more immature than your average college student. Posters on a popular college sports message board, rivals.com, took potshots at residents who oppose the Catholic university's proposed $200 million expansion, which includes three dormitories, a six-story parking garage, stores, and a performing arts center. The residents belong to a newly formed group called Right Plan for Radnor. Rivals.com commentators singled out members of the group and their families for ridicule, using terms such as "overweight oaf," "gross," "imbecile," and "wild and horny" to describe them.

Now that the 2012 red-carpet hoopla is over, another high-drama fashion season is under way. Prom. If teens take their cues from this year's awards shows, high school gyms will be chock-full of old-school Hollywood glamour. Along with the latest blush tones, I'm predicting a plethora of frocks in fiery reds like the peplumed Louis Vuitton Michelle Williams wore Sunday night at the Oscars. (My absolute fave.) Bluish greens and cobalt blue will be important, too, and we can't forget black.

Gowns in sparkling nudes and vibrant shades were the major red-carpet trends Saturday evening at the 155th Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball. Off-the-shoulder gowns seemed just as popular as strapless ones. And A-line silhouettes were preferred to ball gowns. In fact, Philadelphia's doyennes stepped up the glamour quotient to such heights that some of the dresses were dead ringers for gowns worn by celebrities on red carpets past. For example, first lady Lisa Nutter was particularly radiant sailing up the Academy of Music steps in a deep purple Nicole Miller gown.

Thanks to fresh colors, amazing details, and updated plays on classic silhouettes, the Golden Globes were a talker. From Angelina Jolie's Atelier Versace gown to Mary J. Blige's Michael Kors, our social-media feed is still a-twitter about a handful of gowns seen on the red carpet.   Academy Ball, anyone? Sarah Michelle Gellar's blue tie-dyed Monique Lhuillier featured major skirt drama and a little edge, but still managed to give us princess. We love, love, love Lea Michele's body-skimming Marchesa.

The Bearded Ladies are five women and two men. They sing - very well - and they wear bizarre costumes. Their new show, Wide Awake: A Civil War Cabaret , at the Wilma Theater this weekend and again Dec. 2 and 3, is wildly entertaining, even if it still needs some kinks worked out. Medley is the name of their complicated, charming, entertaining game: old and new, historical and contemporary, male and female, funny and moving, parody and pointed, if...

Thomas Gallia was a graduate student doing a science lab on the roof of a classroom building at Glassboro State College when the Secret Service took his student ID and rousted him from the building. He was interrupted during the most heralded three-day stretch in the history of the college - the remarkable 1967 meeting, in the midst of the Cold War, between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin at Hollybush, the college president's home. But the town was not able to capitalize on its international publicity.

ERIE - The bride wore a gown. The groom did, too. Given the setting, it was only appropriate. Cassy Messenger and Derek McBride had planned a beach wedding, but they ended up exchanging vows in a hospital chapel Saturday after McBride tumbled down a set of stairs on their wedding day, the Erie Times-News reported. McBride broke three ribs and suffered a punctured, collapsed lung in the fall. He was admitted to St. Vincent Health Center but didn't want to postpone the big day. Relatives and St. Vincent nurses decorated the chapel with medical-glove balloons and bows made of gauze.