One day in 1990, 16-year-old Brian Upton rode his bicycle around Rockville Centre looking for a job. During the excursion, he returned a tuxedo he had rented for his junior prom to Advance Formal Wear, and he stopped in to thank the store’s owner, Joel Levinson, for helping make the night memorable. Then Levinson asked Upton if he knew anyone looking for work.
“I was like, my age? To do what?” Upton recalled.
Levinson explained that he needed someone to stock and clean shoes, put shirts away and handle other work around the store. Upton realized that, almost by accident, he had found the job he was looking for.
Upton worked at Advance Formal Wear throughout his junior and senior years at Holy Trinity High School and continued picking up hours there during school breaks at Penn State University.
Decades after that first job, Upton, 52, has closed the store he eventually came to own.
Advance Formal Wear, a Rockville Centre fixture for 75 years, served its final customers on Aug. 1. Upton and his wife, June, are closing the business as they prepare to move to California to be closer to their son, Cavan, who is starting college at the University of San Diego after graduating from Chaminade High School.
Because of the time crunch involved with moving, the Uptons chose to close the store rather than go through the lengthy sales process.
Upton now has a remote position as a director with a pharmaceutical company, which will allow him to work from the West Coast.
Upton acquired Advance Formal Wear, then on Sunrise Highway, in 2011. The business, which moved to Merrick Road after the pandemic, became a family operation, with Brian’s younger brother, Kevin, helping run it and June taking over day-to-day operations in the past year and a half. Upton continued coming in after 5 p.m. and on weekends.
For generations, Advance was where residents went for tuxedos and other formal wear for proms, weddings and events like the Friends of Mercy Hospital’s annual Mercy Ball at The Lannin in Eisenhower Park. The male members of the Honor Guard — high school seniors from Rockville Centre and beyond — rented full-dress tuxedos, with white ties, tails and gloves, for the occasion.
“No matter how many Honor Guards were participating in any given year, they were always very accommodating,” Gloria Disciullo, Mercy’s director of special events, said of Advance. “They were extremely, 100 percent dependable. I'm very sad to see them go.”
Not much is known about the early years of the store, which was founded in 1951, but Chamber of Commerce President Ed Asip remembers renting his prom tuxedo there in 1966. “Everybody would go there,” Asip said.
The closure came as a surprise to Asip, who had spoken with the Uptons months earlier and understood they had been considering a 75th-anniversary celebration.
“They’re going to be missed,” he said.
Mayor Francis X. Murray said he has been an Advance customer since his wedding in 1973, and has returned over the years because of its service and personal attention.
“They treated generations of families with the same care and professionalism, becoming much more than a place to purchase formalwear,” Murray said in a statement. “They became a trusted part of so many of life’s important occasions. They will be deeply missed.”
For Upton, the store’s significance went beyond formalwear. Customers often returned at different stages of their lives, making the business part of their memories.
“It’s something unique and extraordinary that kind of found me, and I found it.” Upton said. “You become a part of their memory and my God, what else could you ask for?”
The store’s final chapter was emotional for Upton, who paused several times during an interview to compose himself. “It really became like my second family,” he said. “And I enjoyed it.”
The Uptons looked for ways to put the store’s remaining inventory to use. They donated more than 100 pairs of patent-leather shoes to the Rockville Centre Fire Department, whose members wear them to march in parades.
The department’s 2nd assistant chief, Brian O’Toole, said the donation came after he stopped at the store to rent a tuxedo for another wedding and learned that it was closing. O’Toole rented his first tuxedo there for his 1994 prom, and rented another one for his 2002 wedding.
“They gave us a lot of shoes,” O’Toole said. “Probably like six full garbage bags of shoes.”
The Uptons also donated suits, shirts, vests and ties to Chaminade’s theater department.
“The sheer volume of inventory donated by the Upton family is unbelievable,” Michael Bruno, Chaminade’s theater director, said. “Not only did they supply us with hundreds of suits, dress shirts, shoes, tuxedos, ties and vests, but they also gave us clothing racks, mannequins and even a steam cleaner. A donation like this is truly unique.”
For Upton, the donations were a final way to give back to the community that had supported the store for generations. For the man who first walked into the store as a teenager looking for a job and eventually became its owner, the ending is bittersweet.
“I care for the village and the town,” he said, “and I wanted it to fall in the right hands, and I believe it did.”
