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Lilly Pulitzer’s brother 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 generate a batch of bright, simple shifts in prints that would hide juice stains, and a fashion sensation was born ( when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Ms. Pulitzer’s pal and schoolmate from Miss Porter’s, wore a Lilly dress in Life magazine.)
WES ANDERSON movies and J. D. Salinger novels both report hyper-colorized worlds of civilized affluence. The characters are all a tiny amazing, beautiful and amazing to be believed — and they’re all a bit unstrung by their passions for sport or religion or art or each other.
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) — Goldie Hawn on “Laugh-In.” “She’s a Piston,” the tag said.
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.
A girl of 12-ish stomped in with her brother 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 blessed 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.”
