Lilly Pulitzer (The Barefoot Queen of Pink and Green)

Lilly

Beautiful Lillian Lee McKim Pulitzer Rousseau

(1931 – 2013)

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Me, Mother’s Day 2023 with Sparky, Wearing a Lilly

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PINK, and Shades Thereof

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My Lilly Pulitzer Bread Box Doll House

Lilly Fabrics Create a Window Curtains, A Chair, Lamp and Footstool

There Are Widows That Look Out To The Ocean

I Love All The Furniture That Came With It

Flamingo’s Are Florida

The Phone on the Foot Stool

You Can See The Palm Trees Outside The Window

And, then there is the entrance through the front door…

I Love All The Cute Furniture and Accessories

What is painted all around the Bread Box Doll House is so lovely as well!

When I Bought All Of This I Didn’t Know Where I Would Put It

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My Lilly Collection

I was so excited to find the books and bags, and mugs, and plates, etc.

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I Was So Excited To Find The Lilly Barbie’s!

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Wearing Lilly, Reading Lilly…

Lilly

Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend

by Kathryn Livingston

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Lilly Pulitzer, 2024

Celebrating 65 Years of Creating Sunshine

I Do Love That My Lilly Book Matches My Lilly Dress

I am thrilled to own it! I adore Lilly.

I believe that in life we recognize those people that are like us. We are then drawn to them. Even if we discover them after their deaths. The ones that I admire the most are all gone. There really isn’t anyone alive that I absolutely adore and can’t get enough of. But Lilly, through her I see me in the future. She wasn’t a greedy person, that has always been obvious. She is like me in the fact that I just want to get up every day and do whatever I want to do, and not what someone tells me to do. I’m not ambitious. Neither was she. I think that she and I just want to enjoy life and not slave away in it.

I do wish her children success, especially her daughter’s. I hope they continue Lilly’s legacy. She was too unique not to carry on her vision. I know there is more to know than what we have read. I hope they bring more to the surface for us to know.

Julie

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I LOVE This Book!

It was back in the summer of 2020 that we decided to rent a house for a week in Weeki Wachee along the spring. I wanted to buy some new clothing and looked online for a few new outfits for our vacation. My goal was to find something that looked as if ‘Florida Had Thrown Up All Over Me!” I found just what I was looking for in Lilly Pulitzer Clothing.

I did not know who she was, or anything about her, I just knew that I loved her clothes.

Then, when it came to doing more clothes shopping through the next few years, I found myself turning more and more to her. I have more Lilly’s now than I can count. A “Lilly” is a dress by Lilly Pulitzer. That’s what they were called back in the 50’s and 60’s.

The clothing just remind me of my childhood and coming to Florida. Bright bold colors, shift dresses. Also, when I was in Elementary School and Jr. High School I would wear dresses with shorts underneath my dresses. Many of her dresses come with shorts to wear underneath them. It’s all right up my alley!

I have stated a few times on my website that I’m not a fashion person. Even though I did go to a fashion college in Charlotte, North Carolina, The American Business and Fashion Institute. I also did go to New York with the school, but it was never me. I was trying to fit into something that I was interested in, but it just wasn’t the right fit for me. Had I known Lilly, I think that I would have fit right in nicely and even would have loved fashion because this kind of fashion is more something that I’m interested in.

So, I guess that I am a fashion person. I just needed to find the right designer.

However, I think this kind of fashion is more of a lifestyle than anything else. And, this is my lifestyle.

(I would like to add that although Lilly died in 2013, someone else has taken over the design part of the business and they are doing an excellent job for Lilly’s legacy.)

In reading this book about her life I cannot help but be impressed by her upbringing and the kind of people that were in her circle, and her family’s. They were rich and privileged, but they weren’t obnoxious. These wealthy families were trailblazers in America. They established so much. There are so many wealthy connections that I would be literally writing a book to describe them to you. Therefore, I just recommend that you read this book.

Lilly wasn’t greedy. She loved her family and friends and lifestyle. She just wanted to design her dresses, raise her children, and enjoy life in her home, Palm Beach, and be with her friends. She was such a creative person. Not just in her clothing, but in her life.

It was when I was browsing online looking for Lilly Pulitzer information that I came across the Biography of her life, but I also found that she authored a few Entertaining Books herself. She loved to entertain. She loved Holidays, although she hated the word, Holiday. She loved food and cocktails. She and her family were always around their pool. Her children and their cousins would put on dramatic performances in their backyard. They just seemed interested in being themselves and not interfering in the lives of other people, as our wealthy seem to do today.

And from what I am reading she was a generous person with a big heart. When her dresses were such a success that her business partners wanted her to design for Fall and Winter, she wasn’t interested. As she would say, ‘It’s summer somewhere.’ She seemed to just want to be herself and enjoy life.

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(I originally wrote this in March, 2024)

You Know You’re Getting Old When You Buy Your First Caftan Like Dress..

(And You Like It!)

I am not one for wearing “tents,” but I do love this dress.

My fashion sense has changed over the past few years once I discovered Lilly Pulitzer.

A Palm Beach designer.

Lilly Pulitzer

Born November 10, 1931

I LOVE Her Shoppe!

She did die on April 7, 2013, (I think that’s the day my step-father died), but someone is continuing her legacy and doing a nice job of it. She was 81 years old upon her death. I love all the clothing and accessories. I even read not too long ago that there are Floridians that hang her vintage dresses around their homes. I love all the colors and prints!

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If you happened to find yourself strolling along Palm Beach’s tony Worth Avenue on a warm day in the mid-1950s, it wouldn’t be unusual to encounter a small rhesus monkey. The monkey (Goony, as he was known) would likely be perched on the shoulder of a young, barefoot woman named Lillian McKim Pulitzer, who—despite what her dirty toes and unkempt hair might imply—was a local Palm Beach socialite with a privileged pedigree.

Lilly with her First Husband. Herbert Pulitzer

(I love this picnic! I would have done the same thing with the coconuts. The more I learn about this woman, the more I see her as a soul sister.)

As Taken From:

History of Lilly Pulitzer

For many people, the name Lilly Pulitzer conjures up images of an affluent, prim-and-proper woman on her way to the beach; not a free-spirited bohemian who loved martinis, loathed underwear (she rarely wore it), and toted her pet monkey around town. But Lilly Pulitzer had a penchant for surprising people, and the story of how she launched her namesake brand is no different: it began in the confines of a psychiatric hospital.

Lilly, 1961

(This is the year I was born. I have a feeling I would have liked her.)

The year was 1958 and Pulitzer, a just-married heiress and new mom, felt she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. (“In hindsight, I think it was really and truly postpartum [depression],” Lilly’s daughter Liza said in a phone interview.)

Not knowing what was wrong with her, Lilly did what any wealthy twenty-something would do—she checked herself into a mental health facility. (“In the old days, we used to call it Bloomingdale’s,” she joked.) “I had never had a responsibility in my life,” she said in a 1994 W magazine interview. “I couldn’t button my shoes or do my own pigtails…All I had ever had to do was get to my tennis lesson or ride my pony.”

Pulitzer spent several months in treatment and eventually received a startling diagnosis from the doctor. “There’s nothing the matter with you,” she recalled the physician saying. “You just need something to do.” And so, she decided to open a juice stand.

As the story goes, Lilly thought up her now-iconic shift dress while squeezing oranges from her husband’s orchard. The design would be printed to hide the juice stains, thick enough to go commando, and unfitted, to keep comfortable and cool in the Florida heat.

Peter Pulitzer, Pilot and Owner

Lilly Pulitzer Exiting Her Husband’s Plane, Key West, Florida, 1963

(I LOVE this photo! That is my style!)

She asked a seamstress to create a sample, and before long, she was out of the juice business and into the dress business. “I asked my husband if we could put a few of my dresses in [his fruit shop], about 12 or 15,” Lilly told the Palm Beach Post in 1964. “He said ‘No—80!’ I said, ‘You’re out of your mind.'”

But they were an instant hit, even before Lilly developed a partnership with Key West Hand Prints, a screen-printing shop, which would become essential in establishing Lilly Pulitzer’s iconic vibrant aesthetic.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis Wearing a Lilly Pulitzer Dress in Italy

“The first Lillys were made from fabrics I’d buy in the dime stores in West Palm Beach,” she said in a 1971 interview in the Palm Beach Post. “We were a real shock to everyone. People thought the Lilly dress was a fad that would last about two years…We just picked up steam and kept going.”

The clothes sold because they were unlike anything else on the market.

“They were the antithesis of what most women were wearing at the time. In the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, women were corseting themselves to fit the clothes. They were wearing heavily constructed longline bras, panty girdles, full slips, stockings, stiletto heels—it was that Mad Men look, and Lilly would have none of that,” said Steven Stolman, who not only curated the brand’s 50th Anniversary Retrospective, and worked on the revival collection of Lilly Pulitzer in the ‘90s, but also had a personal friendship with the woman

herself. (Stolman is a regular contributor to TownandCountryMag.com).

“Remember, Lilly was not a little lady. She had a big personality, a huge heart, and an appetite for life. She loved good food and she loved a good cocktail,” he said.

Key to the success of the business was Lilly’s network of society women, both in Palm Beach and back in New York, but none of whom influenced the brand’s popularity quite like Jackie Kennedy.

After the first lady was photographed in Capri wearing a polka-dot Lilly Pulitzer shift in 1962, the business “took off like a zingo,” to quote the dressmaker herself. And by February of 1963, Lilly was the one being featured in magazines; the popularity of her clothes, which by that point were being sold in boutiques nationwide, had warranted her a Life spread of her own.

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Me, Wearing One of Many of My Lilly Pulitzer Dresses

I just wanted to say that I really do like her. Not just her clothing. She was a unique personality. I never knew she went around BAREFOOT, but hearing that just solidified my admiration of her.

I do shop her website and buy her clothing. What I love the most about it all are the loud colors. There was a time when I was so wearing so much black and all these dark colors. When I discovered her clothing I found myself wearing so many beautiful and loud colors. Bright and happy shades. It’s as if I wasn’t invisible anymore. I was suddenly seen, and admired.

I can’t tell you how many times I get compliments on her clothing that I wear. Just today I received a compliment. I have people that tell me they love the dress I’m wearing as I pass them by with my shopping cart, both men and women! I can be out at a restaurant and I will receive a compliment from the staff, or guests sitting at nearby tables. The clothing is truly magnificent!

All the colors also give a lift to my mood. Oh, the ‘Little Black Dress’ will always rule but, for all those other occasions, I like wearing color, many colors sometimes.

You know, I’ve been coming to Florida my entire life, probably having seen her clothing many times, I just didn’t connect it to her. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind I associate some of my happy Florida memories with some of her vintage clothing? Or the lovely ladies I saw wearing her dresses? Perhaps even my own Grandmother?

Either way, her clothing makes me happy. I will continue to wear her.

Thanks Lilly.

I would have loved to have known you.

I think we would have liked each other, seeing as how we have so much in common.

You are an inspiration. RIP.

Julie

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Mother’s Day Gift of Cookie Cutters

I Bought Several For My Daughter and My Son’s Girlfriend Mackenzie

The Pink and Green Gift Box I Painted Myself Back in the 90’s

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Tutu and Peanuku Barbie’s in the Kitchen

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Good Morning, Palm Beach Quiche

(Topped With Micro-Greens)

Served On My Lilly’s Plates with Coffee in My Lilly Mug

My Lilly Inspired Breakfast

Don’t Forget The Indian River, Florida Orange Juice

Lilly Wrote Two Entertaining Books

Pulitzer published a pair of lifestyle books—Essentially Lilly: A Guide to Colorful Entertaining and Essentially Lilly: A Guide to Colorful Holidays—with author Jay Mulvaney.

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Lilly Pulitzer, Also Known as The Barefoot Queen of the Jungle

Barefoot Queen of the Jungle

This Barefoot Palm Beach Royalty Queen went around Barefoot everywhere. She was also tan year round that people would mistake her for a Seminole Indian. My favorite story about Lilly was when she had her son Peter strapped to her back, and went to his pediatric appointment barefoot that the nurse at the front desk was so alarmed that she went into the back to tell the doctor that there was this Indian woman out there to see him! As if that was a bad thing. 🙂 Lilly wasn’t a prejudiced person. She probably enjoyed being mistaken for a Seminole Indian.

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At The Beach

Lilly and Peter

Lilly Eloped and Married Herbert “Peter” Pulitzer Jr. in 1950, and was Married to him Until 1969.

They Had 3 Children: Peter, Minnie and Liza

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Indian River

I LOVE THIS CITRUS!

Peter Pulitzer’s orchards, Indian River, were some of the nicest tasting citrus in the world. He would work with the Seminole Indians. They produced some of the finest Oranges and Grapefruits. Indian River Grapefruit has a distinctive sweetness and juiciness that cannot be found anywhere else on Earth.

(I do know that I love Grapefruit Juice now. It never used to be a favorite, but it is now.)

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My Lilly Kitchen

I am known for changing the look of my kitchen every few years. It has gone from looking Hawaiian, to Old Florida, to Asian, and now to Palm Beach, Florida and Lilly Pulitzer.

I am my Grand-Daughter’s main care-giver, hence the High Chair.

With my husband working overseas I have pretty much made the kitchen all mine, which I am enjoying immensely.