Chloe's Closet Offers Free Prom Wear to Bronzeville Students

Tyesa Walton started with 40 dresses. She has 400 now.

The Dunbar Vocational High School special education teacher has spent three prom seasons filling racks inside a converted storage room at 3000 S. King Drive in Bronzeville, offering free formal wear to students who can’t afford the cost of prom. The program, Chloe’s Closet, opened for the 2026 season on Saturday, giving students a boutique-style shopping experience complete with volunteer stylists Walton calls “Fairy Godmothers.”

Dunbar students can shop the racks during lunch periods. Students from other schools schedule weekend appointments by email, pull a number when they arrive, and get paired with a Fairy Godmother who helps them choose an outfit, shoes, and jewelry. Floor-length gowns, colorful dresses sorted by length, and rows of shoes fill the space, all organized by size.

The closet is personal for Walton in ways that don’t show on the racks.

She named it after her daughter Chloe, who died at birth. After moving back to Chicago from Dubai with her family in 2018, Walton began distributing dresses sent by a friend on the West Coast. That friend pushed her to grow the effort, even when Walton wasn’t sure she was ready.

“I felt like I wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t listen,” Walton said.

They gave away more dresses that following year. Then the pandemic stopped everything, and Walton’s inventory went back into storage. It sat there for years. The push to restart came from an unexpected place: the realization that Chloe would have graduated high school the year Walton felt that pull to try again.

“I just started getting this itchy feeling, like this emotional feeling. It was so crazy. And then I remembered that Chloe would have graduated high school that year,” Walton said. She still talks with Chloe’s two sisters about who their daughter and sibling might have become.

A Dunbar alumna herself, Walton inspects every donated item for quality and accepts donations year-round. The Block Club Chicago coverage of Saturday’s opening shows racks packed tight with gowns photographed April 15, 2026, the day before doors opened for the season.

Dunbar senior Chanel Willies modeled for the opening, walking the campus in a royal blue, one-shoulder satin gown she pulled on her first try from the rack. Her classmates approved immediately, she said. This was Willies’ second year helping Walton draw foot traffic to the boutique. She had originally come looking for a gown for her boyfriend’s military ball but ended up volunteering instead.

Walton recently marked another milestone: the renovation of Chloe’s Closet space and the opening of Chloe’s Kitchen, a food pantry set up directly beside the boutique. Both resources sit inside Dunbar, a school that serves students from across the South Side, many of whom face real economic pressure when prom season arrives. According to the Illinois State Board of Education, Dunbar serves a student population where the majority qualify for low-income support services.

The cost of prom has climbed steeply. The National Retail Federation has tracked average prom spending above $1,000 per student in recent surveys, counting dress or suit, tickets, transportation, and accessories. Walton’s operation cuts that figure down sharply, handing students a full outfit without a receipt.

What started as a small act of grief made tangible, giving away dresses in honor of a daughter who never got to wear one, has grown into something Bronzeville students count on every spring. Walton solicited donations from her personal and professional networks to build inventory from those original 40 dresses to 400. She keeps the doors open, keeps accepting donations, and keeps training Fairy Godmothers to make sure every student who walks in leaves with something that fits.

The Dunbar alumna turned special education teacher didn’t set out to run a boutique. She set out to keep her daughter’s name alive in a neighborhood that needed exactly what she had to give.