The fashion of The Stony Brook School’s prom included bold colors, endless sparkles upon tulle, and tributes to cultures around the world.
On Thursday night, three students expressed the heritage of their families by sporting traditional attire at the prom, representative of their backgrounds and tastes.
Senior Ariel Peilin Wang came to the United States from Beijing when she was 11. She’s studied and lived at The Stony Brook School for six years, and wanted to choose a prom dress that highlighted her Chinese heritage.
Wang said she traveled back to Beijing to pick out her dream dress from a tailor shop next to her home. She said that wearing the dress (called a qipao) to prom was a great way to express herself. Plus, it’s her favorite shade of blue, accentuated by intricate gold stitching.
“I think it’s symbolic of Chinese culture and women’s idealistic beauty in China,” Wang said. “So I wanted to take the opportunity at prom here in the United States to represent my own culture and background.”
Wang said that through class assignments and discussions, the school’s diverse faculty and student body have come together by learning about each other’s cultures over the years.
“We have kids and faculty coming from all over the world, representing many different countries and continents,” she said. “So I think it’s been a very special experience learning with people with different culture and different stories.”
Wang’s mother, Christine Kang, came in from Beijing for her daughter’s graduation and pre-prom activities at the school, which included a photo shoot and procession before the students boarded buses heading to The Carltun in East Meadow. Said Kang, “She has grown from a little kid to a young lady here and I’m so proud and so grateful to have visited this week.”
Junior Anum Khan attended the prom with her friend, a senior, and decided to honor her Pakistani heritage in her attire. Just hours before the pre-prom event, Khan chose to wear one of her mother’s dresses, a sweeping floor-length gown with splashes of deep purple and plenty of sparkling jewels.
“It’s kind of a fusion, I think, of American and Pakistani because there’s beads, there’s this patterning here, but the signature Pakistani thing I would say are the jewels here,” Khan said, pointing to different parts of her dress as her mother snapped photos.
“I love wearing traditional [Pakistani] outfits,” Khan added. “And I’m so comfortable in them and I really think they’re beautiful, so I think for prom it’s a perfect combination.”
Senior Gift Okwa also struck a “perfect combination” with his look: a salute to his Nigerian roots with some added European influences and American flair.
Before coming to the United States in 2014, Okwa lived in Nigeria and Angola in Africa, plus Canada and Saudi Arabia for years at a time. He said that for his senior prom fashion, he wanted to go “all out” and express his individuality. So, he reached out to @ThreadedCultures on Instagram, a fashion brand that marries African and European style in its designs. His prom look was custom-made for him.
“The main traditional influences would probably be the pattern [and] the color,” Okwa said. “I think the thing itself stands out a lot and I think that says a lot about my country and where I come from. We’re not very quiet people, we tend to be loud and take charge, we tend to not back down, so I think that’s what this represents.”
Okwa said he received a positively “stunned” reaction from his friends when they saw his outfit.
“I think the very fact that I wore this to my prom means that there’s definitely some aspect of our school that makes it possible for our students to look into themselves, as well as learning about the world,” he said.
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