By
Bella Druckman,
a writer at the Strategist covering Gen Z shopping habits and fashion.
She joined the Strategist in 2024. Previously, she wrote about gifts at Shop Today.
For several years now, a teenage girl’s going-out uniform, wherever “out” may be for a 16-year-old, has been a tiny tube dress. Some of these dresses have spaghetti straps, others are strapless, a few have long sleeves — and they almost always fail the fingertip test. Purveyors of these going-out dresses are often DTC: Popular ones include White Fox (best known for its hoodies), Peppermayo, Cider, and Princess Polly. Recently, the last of that bunch has been making the pivot to brick-and-mortar shops, specifically in malls throughout the country. (The brand is especially prominent at Simon malls, such as Garden City’s Roosevelt Field and King of Prussia in Pennsylvania.) But even at Princess Polly’s two-story shop on Soho’s “Tween Row,” there’s nowhere near enough room for all the dresses in its catalogue — which, after I narrowed down the offerings to just the going-out category, includes over 900 styles.
