Dressing up the grads in gowns

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This article was published 01/04/2019 (2566 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of dedicated volunteers are opening up a curated closet of party dresses so all high school graduates can have a fabulous gown in June.

The Gowns for Grads Winnipeg organizing committee is hosting a party dress pop-up shop on April 6 at their studio at 35 Albert St. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The cocktail dresses and knee-length garments in stock are being sold for $20 a piece (all in, cash only) with the proceeds of the sale going to purchase plus-size gowns for grads, committee chair Brooke Bouchard explained.

The volunteer association, which was founded in 2009 to ensure all young women can participate in the graduation celebration by providing free dresses, works year round to build their inventory in all sizes. However, the donation based group tends to receive straight-size gowns in higher quantity and quality, over plus-size.

“That is by far, in a way, our greatest challenge,” Bouchard said. “Our goal is to be able to have the same quality of inventory and the same selection available to the grads regardless of what size they are.

“We have students in all sizes, but we find that a good percentage of the ones who come through our program are in the plus-size range and we certainly want to be able to offer them the same selection as any other size would have,” she said.

The committee needs to make about $2,000 at the sale to purchase gently used dresses for their clients. This year’s fundraiser will benefit the class of 2020, while this year’s grad class will benefit from the committee’s first pilot sale in 2018.

“We purchase on Kijiji and the Facebook Marketplace, places like that, and we have a whole network of volunteers and places where we shop,” Bouchard said. “We’ve gotten really good at sourcing fabulous plus-size gowns, but they do come at a bit of cost.”

The dresses that will be available for purchase at the pop-up sale have come from donations to Gowns for Grads Winnipeg that were not necessarily suitable for a graduate, Bouchard said.

“They’re lovely, they just weren’t formal enough or fancy enough for what the grads were looking for,” the Tuxedo local said. “By and large, they weren’t wanting the short style, casual dresses, but these are all perfectly appropriate if you were a wedding guest or a middle school grad, or just parties that you have in the summer.”

Bouchard said there are dresses for all ages and occasions, and all have been cleaned and are in good repair.

While the committee has enough dresses for this year’s class — roughly 500 grads are expected to visit the studio over the coming months — more volunteers are needed to make the selection process run smoothly, Bouchard said.

And grads still in need of a dress are encouraged to reach out to the organization or their teachers to become a client.

“We can always accommodate another student,” Bouchard said. “We want to make sure everyone who needs us has access to us.”

For more information go to gownsforgrads.com