Lilly Pulitzer: Purveyor of Palm Beach dreams

Lilly Pulitzer: Purveyor of Palm Beach dreams

The fashion designer was as much a lifestyle maven as quirk queen. pulitzer with dress (Photo: Robert H. Houston AP) Lilly Pulitzer didn't just sell day-glo clothes in punchy prints. In a feat of fashion business acumen that would have no doubt impressed her famous grandfather-in-law, newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, she sold a lifestyle — a posh, fern-festooned Palm Beach fantasy that the masses eagerly scooped up. "Style isn't just about what you wear, it's about how you live," the designer said in 2004. Pulitzer, who died Sunday at 81 in — where else? — Florida, was more figurehead than fashion fixture. Her fans probably couldn't conjure Lilly herself, but they craved "Lillys": '60s shifts in shades that veered from sherbet to seafoam, scattered with seashells, seahorses, starfish and sundry other symbols of sunny optimism. No wonder the Kennedys, that other family of summer house dreams, were reportedly devotees. Pulitzer the quirk queen was a savvy socialite. Her patterned, pink-and-green paean to prep was always trotted out with a gin-and-tonic-fueled wink. The fun fizzled during the '80s, when edgy, unironic neon blared brightly and ladylike silhouettes were shoved into the back of the closet. But the brand revived about a decade ago, discovered by the daughters and granddaughters of Pulitzer's original preppy posse, who were no doubt looking to live like they, too, were on permanent vacation. Suddenly, again, the jangly, almost juvenile aesthetic seemed fresh and fun. After all, as Pulitzer once said, "being happy never goes out of style." 

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