The Lilly Pulitzer store on Madison Avenue in New York. / Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Let us take this feverish color palette and apply it to casual resort-wear. Envision the mescaline rapture of a tropical morning on an infinite golf course. Mirrored beads of dew steaming into the soft turquoise heat. The loving family is educated, earnest and perfumed by chlorine and sunblock.
Lilly Pulitzer’s mother was a Standard Oil heiress; her husband was the grandson of the publishing Pulitzer. The business began as an orange juice stand in Palm Beach, Fla. (her husband owned orchards). She had her dressmaker create a batch of bright, simple shifts in prints that would hide juice stains, and a fashion sensation was born (especially when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Ms. Pulitzer’s pal and schoolmate from Miss Porter’s, wore a Lilly dress in Life magazine.)
When I visited the newly refurbished two-story shop on Madison Avenue, I was, as usual, dressed entirely in black, which doesn’t make me self-conscious in most New York locales. But here, it was a bit like attending a children’s birthday party in a latex ski mask.
I stopped in my tracks to admire the way-outness of a rack of a frilly silk chiffon go-go halter dresses in sherbet pink and orange ($348) — very Goldie Hawn on “Laugh-In.” “She’s a Piston,” the tag said.
A girl of 12-ish stomped in with her mother and announced her need to buy her graduation dress.
“It’s so cute,” a tall blond saleswoman informed me. “Mothers and daughters come on pilgrimages. The girls save up all their own money!”
The staff members are as kind as camp counselors, which makes these fortunate tweens wholly un-self-conscious. The graduate toddled out of the dressing room holding a strapless white egg over her bustless bust, bleating: “Mom? I can’t zip it.”
A saleswoman rushed over to deliver a blast of sisterly attention.
I am not a woman who goes all woozy over infants, but in the next room, there were some baby clothes that drilled my molars full of cute: e.g., the Ruth, a miniature one-piece bathing suit with a ruffled skirt and a tiger illustration. It’s $58, pricey for a washcloth-size garment a growing baby might wear for a grand total of 4.8 hours. But irresistible, were I not Ruthless.
Lilly Pulitzer’s mother was a Standard Oil heiress; her husband was the grandson of the publishing Pulitzer. The business began as an orange juice stand in Palm Beach, Fla. (her husband owned orchards). She had her dressmaker create a batch of bright, simple shifts in prints that would hide juice stains, and a fashion sensation was born (especially when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Ms. Pulitzer’s pal and schoolmate from Miss Porter’s, wore a Lilly dress in Life magazine.)
When I visited the newly refurbished two-story shop on Madison Avenue, I was, as usual, dressed entirely in black, which doesn’t make me self-conscious in most New York locales. But here, it was a bit like attending a children’s birthday party in a latex ski mask.
I stopped in my tracks to admire the way-outness of a rack of a frilly silk chiffon go-go halter dresses in sherbet pink and orange ($348) — very Goldie Hawn on “Laugh-In.” “She’s a Piston,” the tag said.
A girl of 12-ish stomped in with her mother and announced her need to buy her graduation dress.
“It’s so cute,” a tall blond saleswoman informed me. “Mothers and daughters come on pilgrimages. The girls save up all their own money!”
The staff members are as kind as camp counselors, which makes these fortunate tweens wholly un-self-conscious. The graduate toddled out of the dressing room holding a strapless white egg over her bustless bust, bleating: “Mom? I can’t zip it.”
A saleswoman rushed over to deliver a blast of sisterly attention.
I am not a woman who goes all woozy over infants, but in the next room, there were some baby clothes that drilled my molars full of cute: e.g., the Ruth, a miniature one-piece bathing suit with a ruffled skirt and a tiger illustration. It’s $58, pricey for a washcloth-size garment a growing baby might wear for a grand total of 4.8 hours. But irresistible, were I not Ruthless.
