Fake tans, satin gowns, hip flasks, limousine kisses, and scruffy, pimpled boys in awkward suits… just some of the things one might encounter on Prom night.  

Prom is a rite of passage for every high school graduate, a drunken goodbye to the six years spent navigating locker-lined hallways. It’s a night to embrace pop music, dance like a dork with your best friends, and consummate tenth grade romances. It is also a night of dressing up, of wearing the frockiest frock in your wardrobe, of putting on that extra layer of foundation and that extra spritz of Britney Spears Fantasy.

My prom, or ‘formal’ as we call it in Australia, was more about slideshows and speeches than plastic crowns and slow dancing. The girls were disappointingly sophisticated in their gown choices and there weren’t any leopard-print Hummers or cringey DJs. The punch wasn’t even spiked… a mediocre affair, really.

That doesn’t mean I can’t dream about the prom experience I never had. In a recent bout of creativity, I exploited my cousin’s modelling skills to put together two formal-inspired outfits for my imaginary ‘Class of 2013’, resulting in the images above.