What you need to know: 

  • Teenage girls are googling the red emoji dress in record numbers
  • They want to wear it to their school formals and proms this year
  • Girls want to look exactly like their favourite emoji
  • Designers and formalwear stores can’t keep up with demand
  • The girls’ mums reckon their daughters are crazy

Teenage girls around Australia and around the world have been frantically googling the “red emoji dress”, so that they can dress as their favourite emoji for the school formal this year.

In the past, senior school students have tried to copy the red carpet looks of their favourite celebrities but this year, without a hint of irony, it’s all about looking like the red dress emoji.  The emoji, which is one of the top 10 most-sent emojis on earth, is seen as an emblem for fun loving, independent and empowered young women everywhere, and school leavers want to wear it with pride.

“We text each other the dancing lady all the time,” Year 11 student Bethany Jamieson from Illawarra Secondary College told Street Corner.  “Friend’s birthday?  Red dress dancing emoji.  Parents away for the weekend?  Red dress dancing emoji.  Skipping biology to go for a cheeky durry?  Red dress dancing emoji.  Every.  Single.  Time.”

“The chick in that emoji is having the time of her life, and on your formal night that’s the type of night you want to have.  We’re not taking the p-ss with this.  We just really want the dress.”

Formalwear stores have begun selling out of red dresses, with local proprietors unable to keep with demand.  Debbie, from Debbie’s Wedding and Formal  on Brisbane’s southside says it is out of control.  “The girls come in, sometimes with a few girlfriends, sometimes with their mum, and they just don’t want to see anything else,” Debbie told Street Corner.  “I try to show them some great stuff in blue, black, different lengths but nup, they only want something long and red.   “Some of the private school girls even come in with the exact measurements and want it perfectly to scale.”

I SEE RED, I SEE RED, I SEE RED: Girls want to match the emoji look for less.

It’s not just at fashion stores.  Young women who are trying to get the “emoji look” are turning to online stores in an attempt to dress like the emoji for less.  “Online is the way to go,” Julia Fenton, a Year 12 Student at St Wilhelmina’s Girls School told Street Corner.  “The long red dresses with a split cost heaps in the shops, but me and mum got mine from China online for sixty bucks.”

A Google insider told Street Corner that searches for “buy the red emoji dress” has gone up nearly 700% in the past three weeks.  Online retailers say that demand has been almost impossible to keep up with, and have asked their suppliers overseas to increase production to cope with the late 2016 onslaught.

SAY YES TO THE DRESS: Google searches for the red emoji dress are going into overdrive.

The mothers of many of the teenage girls are totally bewildered with their daughters’ obsession with the red dress.  “I couldn’t believe it,” Cathy, the mum of one school leaver told Street Corner.  “It’s totally ridiculous.  I mean I can understand dressing up as a cartoon for their muck-up day, but for the formal? I just don’t get it.”

While the red dress has been selling-out, we’re told that any other style is a fashion faux-pas for teens this year.  “When we couldn’t find any of the red dresses in stock, I suggested the green emoji dress as a Plan B,” mum Cathy told us.  “But my daughter nearly bit my head off, and told me it was ‘fugly as sin’.”

“It’s gross,” the 17 year old daughter told Street Corner.  “And it’s totally povo.”