Features

by Hirdesh Matta,
photos by Julie Wiatt

One year after setting a goal of collecting 100 prom dresses for teenage girls who are struggling with the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina — and collecting instead 2,800 dresses — Brenda Smoak, owner of the Silver Spring shop Alchemy, is searching for prom jewelry to send to New Orleans.

As of March 23, she and her cohort, Harvard University freshman Marisa West, already had come up with 300 pieces. They are calling the jewelry "Gifts of Glitz."

Alchemy, which opened in February 2005, features fine arts and crafts as well as clothing. Last year, Marisa, a Beltsville teenager and a former Miss DC National Teenager, approached Brenda with the idea of doing something to benefit high school students who had moved back into the devastated city.

Marisa West; Alchemy's owner, Brenda Smoak; Marisa's mom Leathia West

"I met Marisa when she was 15," says Brenda. "She was at a little craft fair with her Mom. She was selling pens she had sculpted out of clay polymer. Something about her caught my attention. I told her some day I'd open a store and call her. When I opened Alchemy I called her and said, 'Do you remember me?'

"I was taken by the idea of the prom dresses. I said, 'I have a vision that we'll need a semi-truck.' And we did need a semi. I was wowed by the generosity of the public."

Marisa says, "I visited New Orleans to distribute the prom dresses, I went to a prom, and the girls had the biggest smiles. One of the teachers, who had taught there 20 years, said that the prom was the best prom ever, which was truly amazing considering how much each student had lost."

This year they decided that jewelry would be met with similar enthusiasm. For information, visit the Alchemy website at www.artandalchemy.com and look under the events section or contact Marisa at promdressneworleans@yahoo.com.

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