Remembering the queen of prints
Had she not been among such august company at the time of her death, Lilly Pulitzer might well have enjoyed a more fitting public sendoff.
But it’s been a busy week or two on the international obituary front, what with the loss of an Iron Lady, a beach blanket babe and the man they called Reveen, not to mention the beloved thumbs- up movie reviewer whose passing evoked more laudatory treatises than the average ink- stained wretch could ever hope.
So when Pulitzer died April 7 at the age of 81, the day before the deaths of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and hypnotist Peter Reveen and three days after the loss of movie critic Roger Ebert, her accomplishments were buried on the back pages, behind the ads for furnished apartments.
And that’s too bad — because Pulitzer was a woman worth a moment or two of mourning, worth a chat over the water cooler, worth a recollection of her contribution to modern fashion.
Because before there were Academy Award red carpets and Mr. Blackwell’s Worst- Dressed, before Joan Rivers’ Fashion Police and Heidi Klum’s Project Runway, there was Lilly Pulitzer.
Lillian McKim was born rich in 1931, her mother an heiress to the Standard Oil fortune whose bankroll afforded her daughter the requisite round of colleges and finishing schools before she up and eloped with Peter Pulitzer ( grandson of publisher Joseph) in 1950.
Eschewing the obligatory Palm Beach social swirl, she decided to sell orange juice squeezed fresh from the family’s Florida groves at a roadside stand. In a brilliant example of the old saw that necessity spawns invention, Pulitzer grew so fed up with the mess the squeezing process made of her clothes that she asked her seamstress to come up with a sleeveless shift- style dress using bright floral print fabrics, all the better to disguise the orange juice stains.
Before long, customers were stopping by to check out her dresses, and the homemade juice stand morphed into a homemade dress stand.
In 1959, Pulitzer started her selfnamed business out of a Miami factory, producing a practical line of wildly cheerful clothing ─ much of it made with Key West- sourced handmade fabric ─ that was soon being snapped up by social butterflies in prominent clans like the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Whitneys and Kennedys ( Jackie and daughter Caroline were fans).
“Lilly’s look” soon become the ladylike de rigueur uniform for society mavens, debutantes and sorority pledges all over the country, an instant 1960s success story.
In 1993, Pulitzer sold the company to Sugartown Worldwide Inc. while retaining creative influence, and today the firm continues to produce her colourful signature look. The Pulitzer label is sold in 75 signature Lilly Pulitzer stores throughout the U. S. ( and one in Ontario), as well as major department stores. So entrenched is the now- classic Lilly look in the North American fashion consciousness, it has inspired museum exhibitions, and several Queen of Prep- penned lifestyle guides and calendars.
That Pulitzer belongs to a triad of wealthy women ─ Diane von Furstenberg ( the wrap dress) and Gloria Vanderbilt ( designer blue jeans) ─ who turned to fashion to make their mark may have meant she didn’t get the mainstream respect she should have upon her death.
But that doesn’t make her accomplishments any less memorable.