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ST. CLAIR SHORES — Even on a tight budget, any student will be able to feel like a princess as they pick out dresses from Cinderella’s Closet, hosted by Lakeview and Lake Shore students.
Emily Wilson, a substitute teacher at Lakeview High School, said the idea was created by Elizabeth Curd, a teacher at Lakeview and the sponsor for Huskies with Heart.
The student group takes part in a big project each year.
“We’ve been collecting special occasion dresses for prom and homecoming and jewelry and shoes and accessories and we’ve even started collecting some suits and ties and things like that,” Wilson said.
Students from Lakeview Public Schools, Lake Shore Public Schools and surrounding districts will be able to come to the Lakeview cafeteria and pick out dresses for $20, shoes for $10 and accessories for $5. The closet will be open from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on March 14 for just Lakeview and Lake Shore students, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on March 15 for everyone.
“We’ll have dressing rooms available, and we have backdrops for selfies, stuff like that,” Wilson said.
Wilson said their counselors are getting in touch with counselors from surrounding districts. There will be two sets of dressing rooms and students will work the event.
“We have it all in our heads as a successful event,” Wilson said. “Hopefully we’re able to pull it off the way we have envisioned it to be.”
The dresses are for any event, school dances such as formals and prom, as well as for special events like weddings. A wide variety of dresses will be available for purchase from ball gowns to short dresses and more.
“It’s pretty fun going through because you get to see all the different dresses and remember back to when I was in high school and loved to dress up for those things,” Wilson said.
The money will help cover different things such as dry cleaning for the dresses.
Wilson’s son, Nathan Wilson, is the president of the group. Curd currently teaches four subjects.
“I’m on campus every day and she’s involved so I’ve just took it on because I had more time than she did,” Wilson said about Curd. “Just want to make her brainchild come to life.”
The dresses are donated from the surrounding community. Wilson has posted on social media, and they’ve hosted three donation days where people can drop them off at Lakeview High School. The final donation day is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb. 22 in the Lakeview Auditorium.
At press time, approximately 300 dresses had been donated.
Lake Shore High School’s Black Student Union also takes part in this drive.
“When we originally put (it) out there, I was contacted by Lake Shore and they were thinking about putting one on, so we decided to come together,” Wilson said.
Annette Kominiarek, Lake Shore Black Student Union advisor and a Lake Shore teacher, said the club was looking for something for community involvement.
“And it was just one of those fluke things that I had just thought about,” Kominiarek said.
She said she later checked a website and saw Wilson’s post and thought it’d be great to have a bigger event instead of two separate events.
This is the first year the Black Student Union has been a club at Lake Shore High School. Kominiarek said they’ve already participated in a number of volunteer projects and hosted a number of events. They have a core group of around 15 students.
Kominiarek said the students liked the idea of the event.
“I think they’ll be more excited when it comes to event day,” Kominiarek said.
As event day grows closer, the students get more and more excited. Planning for the event started in the fall and Kominiarek also said that was also when their first donation days started.
Wilson said that though the two schools are rivals in football, they’re not really rivals when it comes to stuff like this.
“We’re coming together when it counts,” Wilson said.
The hope, Wilson said, is to continue it on and perhaps host it at Lake Shore if Lakeview can’t.
“And then we’ll help with their school and flip flop back and forth,” Wilson said.
Wilson said she is not opposed to getting South Lake Schools involved as well.
“I think it would be amazing to have all the St. Clair Shores schools work together to do it,” Wilson said. “It just didn’t go in that direction this year.”
