Feed: Entertainment News Sky
Posted on: Monday, April 08, 2013 18:21
Author: Entertainment News Sky
Subject: Fashion Designer Lilly Pulitzer Dies Age 81
| Lilly Pulitzer, a Palm Beach socialite turned fashion designer who was famous for her tropical print dresses, has died at the age of 81. Pulitzer, who married into the famous newspaper family, got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. A rich housewife with time to spare and a husband who owned orange groves, she opened a juice stand in 1959 and asked her seamstress to make dresses in colourful prints that would camouflage fruit stains. The dresses hung on a pipe behind her juice stand and soon outsold her drinks. Jacqueline Kennedy, who attended boarding school with Pulitzer, even wore one of the sleeveless shifts in a Life magazine photo spread. "Lilly has been a true inspiration to us and we will miss her," the Lilly Pulitzer brand wrote on its Facebook page.
"I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy ... fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! I entered in with no business sense. It was a total change of life for me, but it made people happy," Pulitzer said 2009. She also once said: "Style isn't just about what you wear, it's about how you live ... Being happy never goes out of style." But it was not all straight forward. Pulitzer closed her original company in the mid-1980s after filing for bankruptcy protection. The label was revived about a decade later after being acquired by Sugartown Worldwide Inc. Pulitzer retired from day-to-day operations in 1993, although she remained a consultant for the brand.
The designer was born Lilly McKim on November 1931, to a wealthy family in New York state. In 1952, she married Pete Pulitzer, the grandson of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whose bequest to Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prize. They divorced in 1969. Her second husband, Enrique Rousseau, died in 1993. "I don't know how to explain what it was like to run my business, the joy of every day," she told Vanity Fair magazine in 2003. "I got a kick every time I went into the shipping department ... I loved seeing (the dresses) going out the door." Pulitzer, who was known for hosting parties barefoot at her Palm Beach home, also published two guides to entertaining. "That's what life is all about: Let's have a party. Let's have it tonight," she said. |
Lilly Pulitzer's spring show in New York in 2005 
One of Lilly Pulitzer's vintage creations Enclosures:
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