Fairy-tale dress shop

AMERICAN FORK — A new dress shop in American Fork is responding to a community call for modesty in fashion.

Sabrina Beck, the owner of Cinderella's Closet, located in the strip mall off Main Street, takes the modesty notion a step further by offering group discussions on modesty after hours. There she teaches girls and young women how to modify their urban wear and create their own designs.

Many of her dresses are for special occasions, including weddings and high school proms. Her most popular selections are custom-made, one-of-a-kind dresses, but she also carries mass-manufactured garments. She recently purchased overstock dresses from Los Angeles dressmakers that her seamstresses are modifying with sleeves or wider straps.

Customers can pick the fabric and the design, whatever they want, she said.

Her custom designs are more popular than the manufactured dresses, she said.

While the showroom is small, she keeps a few seamstresses busy in a larger sewing shop in the back. The girls can try on their favorite selections in a living room-size fitting area decorated in a Cinderella theme with porcelain mice and glass pumpkins. Meanwhile, lavender calms the walls and the sensibilities.

The Cinderella motif came from joking that the seamstresses are like the mice in the fairy-tale, creating a dress for Cinderella to wear to the ball. Like those mice, Beck's seamstresses create dresses for girls who want to be stylish, yet modestly attired for their Prince Charming, she said.

Open last October, some 40 dresses have already gone out the door with 30 more under construction and commitments numbering about 15.

Customers are coming from as far south as Cedar City and as far north as the Twin Falls area when they are unable to find modest gowns and dresses in their own areas, she said.

To increase her reach, Beck has two Web sites: www.becksbabywear.com for the younger set while: www.wheresmyglassslipper.com will soon go up for older girls and young women.

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E-mail: rodger@desnews.com