Give a gown and help a girl feel good
Published: January 29, 2006
With the perfect dress, any teenage girl can feel like Cinderella.
Anyone who wants to help young women’s fairy tales come true can donate gently used or new dresses so those who can’t afford to buy them new can still go to the prom or semiformal.
The Fort Wayne Medical Society Alliance and Peerless Cleaners are accepting the dress donations as part of their fifth annual “Cinderella Dress Day” on March 11.
“We’ve got a lot of beautiful dresses, but also a lot of old dresses that you just can’t find anymore,” said Marta Wrobleski, the coordinator of the event through the Fort Wayne Medical Society Alliance.
Plus-sizes are in high demand, Wrobleski said.
“The larger sizes – 20, 22 and so on – we’re hoping to get more of these sizes donated,” she said. “Anyone can drop these off at any Peerless Cleaners.”
This is the second year Wrobleski has worked on the event.
“Last year was definitely a ‘learning year,’ ” she said with a laugh. “The weather was horrible, so we had a poor response.”
She also said none of the fliers advertising the event was written in Spanish, so there was little or no response from the Spanish-speaking community.
“Since last year, I made it a point to approach the DeSoto Group,” Wrobleski said. “They were kind enough to translate fliers and posters to reach out to that community.”
This is in addition to the 20,000 other fliers around the Fort Wayne area.
Despite the “poor response,” Wrobleski had over a thousand dresses to go through for the event. Peerless Cleaners, with several locations around Fort Wayne, volunteered to be a drop-off site for anyone wanting to donate a dress. The company stores the dresses at its central location on Main Street.
On March 11, girls and women can go to the Boys and Girls Club (which donated space for the event) at 2609 S. Fairfield Ave. to pick out a dress. All dresses are donated by community members or organizations.
“Two hundred girls showed up last year, and after that, I invited the Civic Theatre and (University of) Saint Francis’ drama class to pick through the dresses.
After that, I had 400 dresses left. I picked out the best 50 to 100 dresses to hold for this year.”
What about the inevitable “perfect dress” that is the stuff of movies and teen novels? Wrobleski remembers, “We had one beautiful dress. I can’t recall where we got it from, but it was the perfect Cinderella dress. It was pink, had a pretty little top, and the bottom was chiffon.” Wrobleski added. “What we do the day of the event is hang the best 20 dresses on the walls to display, and of course, this dress was one of them.
“One of the first girls to walk in saw the dress and fell right in love with it. It fit perfectly, and she took it home with her,” Wrobleski said.
The prom- or semiformal-bound girls aren’t the only ones who can pick out dresses.
Last year, several mothers were invited to pick out a dress for themselves, she said.
Peerless Cleaners gives a coupon to clean each dress for $5. A normal cleaning costs $13 or more.
“We have reps from Mary Kay for makeup tips; we’ll have sheriffs to talk about the dangers of drinking and driving. We’re trying to get a (cosmetology school) to loan some hairdressers to give tips on hair. It’ll be a lot of fun,” Wrobleski said.
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