I was married in a Lilly Pulitzer dress, and own a pink & green (of course) shift (both a few sizes too big for me now.)
The Palm Beach Post reprints a 2004 profile.
The Lilly Pulitzer retail site’s memorial.
Terrific 2003 Vanity Fair profile:
Indeed, the Lilly is more than sun-kissed resortwear; it is shorthand for Wasp wealth at play. The Good Life dressed in plain old, if wildly colored, cotton, the Lilly embodies Puritan ethics of balance and value. It is not about setting yourself above or apart: a bunch of women in Lillys look like eye-popping paper dolls, one and the same. Like the woman for whom it was named, the Lilly isn’t a strategy of reverse snobbery; it’s completely down to earth, unsnob. As one Lillyphile says, “Jackie Kennedy and her maid wore Lillys.” And how does one wear it? You step in (with or without undies), zip it up as far as you can (the half-zipped zipper is part of the charm), slide into your sandals (Luigis, naturally, today selling under the name Stephen Bonanno, Luigi’s nephew), and you’re out the door and into the club.
