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Portland’s Red Dress Party, the first of its kind in the queer community, is winding down after more than two decades of monochromatic dance parties to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and funds for more than 20 local nonprofit organizations.
Red Dress PDX, the 501(c)(3) charitable organization which plans and executes the annual ball, announced the party’s wrap across social media platforms on May 16. The closure was filed during the last tax season, which closed in April.
“There’s been a fundamental shift in the way that people spend time with each other,” says Rhonda Henderson, Red Dress PDX’s board president.
Henderson says the Red Dress Party’s pending closure was announced at the end of the night of last year’s party. Some of the Red Dress Party’s historic sponsors and donors closed during the pandemic, with not enough new ones to fill the gap. A COVID-19 relief grant kept Red Dress PDX afloat after the 2020 and 2021 parties were canceled, but the grant was never a permanent fix.
“This community has already been through one epidemic,” Henderson says. “We certainly don’t want to go through another one.”
The 2023 Red Dress Party, held in Moda Center’s basement as in prior years, was attended by more than 800 people, which was less than half of the party’s pre-pandemic attendance in the thousands. Volunteers who keep the Red Dress Party running smoothly, as well as guests, still weren’t comfortable returning to close-quarters dance parties since pandemic restrictions were lifted.
“We looked at the numbers [and] we realized between that and not having enough bodies to help with the party, we just couldn’t sustain it,” Henderson says.
The first red dress party was thrown in 2001 with 75 people in attendance, and started raising funds in 2003, and eventually inspired red dress parties across the country. Attendees wear red dresses to remember a promise between two gay Portland men living with HIV, that they would wear red dresses to the other’s funeral instead of traditional black. Dresses are still required, though restrictions on what counts as a dress have loosened over the years.
Red dress parties are thrown across the United States, and in Toronto. All of the parties are thrown independent of each other. Red Dress PDX’s largest parties—with punny themes like Redrum, Red Eye and the extremely 2014 Red Wedding—drew more than 2,000 attendees, raising an average of between $20,000 and $35,000 for nonprofits. Some support HIV/AIDS patients, like Cascade AIDS Project, Esther’s Pantry, and Our House of Portland. Others support causes unrelated to HIV/AIDS, like Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls, Morrison Child & Family Services, and the YWCA of Clark County’s domestic violence support program.
Portland could see another red dress party in the future, if a new group of people want to organize one. Henderson says she and the current Red Dress PDX board are taking the next year off, and could return with something new, but for now are looking back fondly on decades of parties. Red Dress PDX’s website, a photo archive of people of all genders and shades of red leaving it all on the dance floor, will stay up through the end of 2024.
“There’s nothing to prevent anyone else from picking up that mantle and creating a new 501(c)(3), or even running it not as a charitable event,” Henderson says. “Someone could absolutely pick up that name.”