From Worth Avenue juice stand to just about everywhere: Lilly Pulitzer celebrates 65 years

The traditional anniversary gift for 65 years is blue sapphire — a brilliantly colored gem befitting the celebration of a colorful brand.

Lilly Pulitzer, a brand that has become synonymous with Palm Beach and the resort lifestyle, this year marks 65 years since its eponymous founder sold the first dress from her juice stand in Via Mizner.

And the brand is celebrating in a big way, with new collaborations, prints and products to mark the occasion.

“It’s such an honor for us to be able to celebrate the brand’s longevity and heritage, but also do it in a fresh way,” said Michelle Kelly, Lilly Pulitzer’s chief executive.

The bash so far has been marked by the release of an anniversary toile print and a limited-edition 65th anniversary collection in shades of pink, green and yellow, with beaded and feather accents.

Anniversary partnerships — so far — have included a Moke America special edition electric vehicle, Lilly-designed Natalie's Orchid Island Juice Co. labels, a collection with Disney and a recently released collaboration with Badgley Mischka.

Over the past 6½ decades, Lilly Pulitzer has grown to a global brand with a dedicated following of Lilly lovers who eagerly search out limited-edition prints and styles.

Those fans say they are drawn by an optimism that comes from a simple shift dress born of necessity, that gave birth to a fashion phenomenon, all led by a female entrepreneur.

“The story of Lilly and what she set out to do in terms of improving her life and creating sunshine … it’s really timeless,” Kelly said.

That story goes that Lilly Pulitzer started her fashion career in the 1950s by designing and selling simple dresses from her Worth Avenue juice stand, where she fresh-squeezed citrus grown by her then-husband and his company Pulitzer Groves Fruit Shop.

The juice stand was an outlet for Lilly Pulitzer at a time when she was recovering from a breakdown, for which she was hospitalized in 1957.

The first dresses she made were crafted from brightly colored cotton remnants bought at a dime store and taken to her seamstress, she told the Palm Beach Daily News in 1982. She chose a tropical palette for the simple shift dresses to hide the juice stains she accumulated throughout each day as she worked.

That first dress, dubbed "the Lilly," took off in Palm Beach like a rocket from Cape Canaveral.

"The little devils started moving," Pulitzer told the Palm Beach Daily News of how quickly the dresses sold. "I had to keep galloping to keep up with it."

She told Time magazine in 1962, when she was 30 years old, that customers tried to buy the dress off her back before she turned to Key West Hand Print Fabrics to design and manufacture the shift dresses to sell in Palm Beach. Artist Suzie Zuzuk, a designer for the fabric company, would go on to create most of the prints the brand used from 1962 until 1985.

The brand officially launched in 1959 and earned major fans — including Jackie Kennedy, Pulitzer's friend who soon would became first lady of the United States.

Kennedy even wore a yellow Lilly shift when she appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1962.

Time in 1962 described the Lilly dress as "somewhere between a chemise and a muumuu," with a straight line to the knee and costing $25 to $45.

"Very few people came into Palm Beach that didn't go away with one," Pulitzer told Time. "They're glad to shed their skirts or shorts and clothes that bind. They wore them all day and all night. And I made them sign a contract to promise not to wear anything underneath; after all, they're fully lined." She added that 1,600 Lilly dresses were sold the previous season.

The first Lilly Pulitzer store opened at 11 Via Mizner. The store's phone number was 655-0112. In 1976, the store moved to 8 Via Parigi — always close to Worth Avenue.

The line expanded with new prints and pieces, including menswear, bathing suits and children's clothing. Everyone from teachers to movie stars were fans of the preppy, laidback aesthetic of the Lilly Pulitzer brand.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the brand's popularity slumped and Pulitzer stepped away from the business, instead focusing on her family with her second husband, Enrique Rousseau. She shut down the business in 1984.

About nine years later, Sugartown Worldwide Inc. bought the rights to the Lilly Pulitzer brand. With her blessing, they revived it and began working to turn it into a global brand.

Over the years, the company has expanded to more than 100 Lilly Pulitzer locations, including signature stores that are known as Via Shops, in honor of the brand's birth in one of Palm Beach's famed Worth Avenue vias.

Sugartown was bought by Oxford Industries in 2010, and Lilly Pulitzer joined a portfolio of brands like Tommy Bahama, Southern Tide and Duck Head.

At the time she died at age 81 in 2013, Pulitzer's brand had been resurrected and was creating new generations of fans of the patterns that popped with colors.

In 2018, the brand returned to its roots and opened a store on Worth Avenue.

Pulitzer's legacy is one of hospitality, style and fun, Kelly said.

"The Palm Beach connection is incredible," she said. "Who doesn't want to spend time here or think about spending time here?"

Indeed, the brand and Palm Beach seem to coexist.

Where else but Palm Beach County will you find a Lilly Pulitzer birthing suite? At Good Samaritan Medical Center, just across the Intracoastal from Palm Beach. And a branded hospital waiting room? Also at Good Sam.

Want to get hitched, Lilly-style? The Palm Beach County Courthouse has a Lilly Pulitzer wedding chapel, complete with a hand-painted mural, a geometric arch with pink and white flowers and palm fronds, and sea shell trim.

“There’s nothing like it in the country, where we have this private and public partnership,” former Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock said when the chapel opened in 2020. “We’re excited. We deal with lots of heavy things on a daily basis so this was a nice escape to give something back to the community.”

Lilly Pulitzer’s designs also serve as tourism ambassadors for Palm Beach as the birthplace for resort fashion, said Erika Constantine, vice president of marketing for Discover The Palm Beaches, Palm Beach County’s tourism marketing organization.

“The Palm Beaches represent a vibrant collection of experiences for all visitors, perfectly embodied in the Lilly Pulitzer brand,” Constantine said. “Through the decades, The Palm Beaches have endured as a premier travel location for those who value luxury and style, and this legendary brand embodies the essence of our tropical paradise.”

That destination and its iconic resort wear is celebrated in “Endless Summer: Palm Beach Resort Wear,” an exhibition open through May 25 presented by the Historical Society of Palm Beach County at the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum in West Palm Beach.

The exhibition — the first-ever Grand Exhibition presented by the historical society — explores Palm Beach’s influence on resort fashion over more than a century.

It’s no surprise that Lilly Pulitzer is featured throughout.

“We were just so grateful to be included,” Kelly said, noting that the show was a gorgeous display of fashion, not just of vintage Lilly Pulitzer pieces but also major fashion houses including Valentino and Pucci.

The timing of the exhibition also couldn’t be better, she said — just in time for Lilly’s 65th anniversary.

Brand devotees give their all to Lilly Pulitzer. They form social circles dedicated to the fashion line, both in person and on social media. They trade clothing, care tips and life events.

"Everyone has a story about Lilly Pulitzer," Kelly said, adding that could be how they were introduced to the brand, or something fun they did while wearing Lilly.

"It's a great platform for getting people to share their stories," she said.

It was in a Facebook group dedicated to people searching for Lilly Pulitzer clothing that Tosha Williams began to develop the idea for a Lilly Pulitzer-themed convention.

Williams had been an art therapist who found her first piece of Lilly Pulitzer clothing at a Loehmann's clothing store near Washington, D.C. "I remember just falling in love," she said of the patchwork piece she purchased on the spot.

Williams, who now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, started looking for Lilly Pulitzer wherever she went and slowly began to collect pieces, drawn by the colorful prints that seemed to make everyone around her smile.

"For me, it's like walking sunshine," she said. At the time, she worked as an art therapist for the National Institutes of Health, and many of her patients were in bed and could not go outside.

"I made sure that I wore my Lilly," she said. "They could see the colors and the sunshine through the scrubs, and they were like, 'Thank you for brightening up my room. Thank you for bringing the sunshine in.'"

Years later as a stay-at-home mom, Williams had the idea for a Lilly convention. She called it "a God nudge," where she would have visions of a brightly colored banner. She finally took the hint when people in a Facebook group for Lilly Pulitzer fans kept mentioning a possible gathering of likeminded ladies.

"It was just a crazy organic thing," she said — a crazy organic think that launched in 2017 and has become a sensation in The Palm Beaches: The Pink Retreat, which draws hundreds of fans of the Lilly lifestyle to Palm Beach and West Palm Beach.

With the fifth annual event approaching from June 20-23, Williams now partners with the brand and Discover The Palm Beaches, along with local businesses, to create a weekend dedicated to the lifestyle represented by Lilly Pulitzer.

"I built a weekend that I thought I would want to go to," she said the first year.

This year's agenda includes a Worth Avenue walking tour, a visit to C. Orrico in Palm Beach for tales of Palm Beach history with the Orrico sisters, afternoon tea at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum and more. More details and reservations are available at thepinkretreat.com.

Being in Palm Beach and wearing Lilly Pulitzer is a different experience than wearing it at home in Nashville, Williams said. "It's night and day," she said. "Honestly, I don't even know how to describe it. It's like magic."

Williams' favorite piece is Lilly Pulitzer's caftan. Her favorite pattern is Let's Get Together, which premiered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Williams loves it because it features faces that look like hers: "It's got brown women all over it," she said. "It's the first print that they did like that. I sold a bunch of my pieces to be able to afford the entire collection."

What’s next for Lilly Pulitzer?

More celebrations and collaborations will be announced throughout the year, Kelly said.

In terms of the bigger picture, Kelly said her team is constantly looking for ways to move the brand forward.

“We think the sky’s the limit,” she said.

Like so many other Lilly Pulitzer fans, Kelly is passionate about the brand and feels a personal connection to its sunshiny prints, serotonin in fabric form.

“When you know that something’s really great and can make you feel good, you want to share it with the world,” Kelly said.

Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at kwebb@pbdailynews.com. Subscribe today to support our journalism.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach original: Lilly Pulitzer celebrates 65th year in style