Lilly

Kathryn Livingston

Description

The real story behind a very private American fashion icon?Lilly Pulitzer

Today, Lilly Pulitzer's iconic brand of clean-cut, vibrantly printed clothes called "Lillys" can be spotted everywhere. What began decades ago as a snob uniform in Palm Beach became a general fashion craze and, later, an American classic. In contrast to the high visibility of her brand, Lilly Pulitzer has largely kept her tumultuous personal story to herself. Bursting forth into glossy fame from a protected low-key world of great wealth and high society, through heartbreaks, treacheries, scandals, and losses, her life, told in detail here for the first time, is every bit as colorful and exciting as her designs.

• Offers a close-up of Palm Beach society, replete with tropical mischief, reckless indulgences and blatant infidelities as well as fascinating stories about the Pulitzer and Phipps families and their world of eccentrics, high achievers, intermarriages, and glamorous trendsetters
• Takes a fresh look at the Roxanne Pulitzer scandal and the atmosphere that fed it, and other episodes involving Lilly Pulitzer's family and social circle
• Traces the many ups-and-downs in Lilly Pulitzer's personal life as well as her business, which suffered a decline in the 1980s before its resurgent transformation into the thriving success it is today
• Includes 25 black-and-white photographs that bring Lilly Pulitzer's world to life

Lilly of Paradise is must reading not only for fans of Lilly Pulitzer and her Lilly brand, but for anyone interested in a journey through the world of privilege and the life of a true American original.

Acknowledgments ix

1. It Girl of the Sixties 1

2. The Healing Properties of Florida Orange Juice 11

3. Barefoot on Worth Avenue 23

4. Rich, Richer, Richest 39

5. Horse Country 49

6. Of Preps and Debs 73

7. Falling in Love with a Pulitzer 115

8. Lillys Blooming Everywhere 135

9. The Perpetual Party Town 157

10. Lilly’s New Love 181

11. The Stormy Season 197

12. Lilly’s Comeback 209

Source Notes 219

Photo Credits 231

Index 233

Photo gallery begins on page 95

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Lilly Pulitzer
• Famous
• Palm Beach
• Rich
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118233757
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: It Girl of the Sixties
Chapter 2: The Healing Properties of Florida Orange Juice
Chapter 3: Barefoot on Worth Avenue
Chapter 4: Rich, Richer, Richest
Chapter 5: Horse Country
Chapter 6: Of Preps and Debs
Chapter 7: Falling in Love with a Pulitzer
Chapter 8: Lillys Blooming Everywhere
Chapter 9: The Perpetual Party Town
Chapter 10: Lilly s New Love
Chapter 11: The Stormy Season
Chapter 12: Lilly s Comeback
Source Notes
Photo Credits
Index
Photo gallery begins on page 95 .

Copyright 2013 by Kathryn Livingston. All rights reserved
Cover image: Davidoff Studios
Cover design: Wendy Mount
Design by Forty-five Degree Design LLC
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Livingston, Kathryn, date.
Lilly : Palm Beach, tropical glamour, and the birth of a fashion legend / Kathryn Livingston.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-50160-3 (cloth : alk. paper); ISBN 978-1-118-25866-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-22034-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23375-7 (ebk)
1. Pulitzer, Lilly. 2. Fashion designers-United States-Biography. 3. Socialites-United States-Biography. 4. Palm Beach (Fla.)-History. I. Title.
TT505.P85L58 2012
746.9 2092-dc23
[B]
2012007300
To my daughter, Valerie, with her feel for fashion and language
Acknowledgments
Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend could not have happened without the aid and encouragement of a broad cast of caring and contributive individuals. Leading off are the book s two knowledgeable and inspiring editors at Wiley who steered the project through a thicket of challenges. The idea for this book belongs to my original editor, Hana Lane. I would like to express my deepest appreciation for her fine-honed editorial instincts, her sense of style, her vital enthusiasm for the project, and her never-less-than-gracious ways. This book would not have come to life without the active role and focusing skills of my sharp-minded later editor, Thomas W. Miller. I am thankful for his ability to suggest improvements without changing the intended meaning of a point, his tightening of the narrative, and his bringing the book to its final form.
At John Wiley Sons, I also owe gratitude to assistant editor Jorge Amaral and senior production editor Lisa Burstiner as well as her team, copyeditor Judith Antonelli and proofreader Rima Weinberg, for their precise reading and skillful sharpening of the text while seeing this book through from manuscript to publication.
I live in fear of not properly thanking the many people who gave freely of their time and memories while I was writing this book. To help me render the particulars of Lilly Pulitzer s life as accurately as possible and to search deeper into the emotional lives of the men and women who surrounded her and influenced the choices she made, a handful of people were particularly essential. Special appreciation goes to my longtime friends Fernanda Kellogg and her husband, Kirk Henckels, both busy New York professionals with strong roots in Palm Beach and personal ties to the Pulitzers, whose astute observations and suggestions provided me with a good starting point. Likewise, I wish to express my gratitude to valued friend Sandy McLanahan, who maintains close links to Palm Beach and generously shared his memories of the spirit of the place as well as of his New England boarding school days, which include recollections about the preppy circle of extraordinary young women who were Lilly s schoolmates at Miss Porter s School in Farmington. I am forever in the debt of Dita Naylor-Leyland, a great-granddaughter of steel industry titan Henry Phipps Jr. She granted me the huge favor of opening windows into the lifestyles of the quietly rich but exceptionally pacesetting intermarried Long Island families who framed Lilly s early years. Dita s cousin Patricia Montgomerie proved to be invaluably encyclopedic about the sporty activities of the horsey set. My appreciative thoughts linger with Nancy Moorland, author of the The Last Debutante , who shared with me some illuminating pages from her yet unpublished but most deserving novel about the resplendent social orbit and poignant anxieties of Lilly s mid-century contemporaries who rushed into early marriages. My endless gratitude to two people who have gone out of their way to patiently assist me with some elusive information: Gonzalo Garcia-Pedroso, with his thoughtful comments and incisive background material about Florida s Cuban families, and Edwina Millington, with her discreet but wittily telling stories about what makes Lilly, her close friend since childhood, so rare and totally unique.
A big thank you goes to the following people who answered questions, told me stories, helped clarify data, directed me to reliable sources, and helped substantiate facts about Palm Beach, fashion, horses, the jet set, Cuban exiles and Lilly Pulitzer Inc. past and present: Dianne Crary, Jon Schotz, Kim Johnson Gross, Mary Phipps, Paul Gachot, Crary Pullen, Margarita Barrera, Fern Tailer, Barbara Cates, Julie Kammerer, Stefane Bartlett, Eve Hatch Holmes, June Weir, and Bob Hardwick. I have relied also on some of my past magazine interviews and conversations regarding topics covered in this book with Rodney Dillard, Marjorie Meek, Mimi Kemble McMakin, Stan Rumbough, Polly Mellen, Jo Leas, Charlie Pepper, David Ober, Agnes Ash, Emilia Fanjul, Bea Cayzer, the late William Hutton III, the late Earl E. T. Smith, the late Whitney Tower, and the late Arthur Bull Hancock. Many of these sources were research for an extensive twenty-page article about Palm Beach I did for Town Country magazine with photographer Slim Aarons. A few sources spoke to me on the condition of anonymity.
I have been the beneficiary of fifty years of published materials on Lilly Pulitzer as well as on the many American high-profile high achievers around her-the McKim, Bostwick, Phipps, Grace, Guest, and Pulitzer families. The bulk of my research was done in the archives of the New York Public Library. My endless gratitude is reserved for several of the research divisions of the NYPL, particularly the Science, Industry, and Business Library where I gleaned more of the corporate story behind the Lilly Pulitzer brand; and to the helpful librarians in the Millstein Room of Genealogical, Biographical, and Local History, who helped to uncover the groundwork that would become the story of Lilly s early life and her family and deep connection to New York City. I also received conscientious assistance from the information-stacked library of New York s Fashion Institute of Technology, the New York Society Library, the New York Historical Society, and the Historical Society of Palm Beach County and Old Westbury Gardens.
Immeasurably helpful were my extraordinary researchers. My writer and archivist daughter, Valerie Livingston, was part of the development of this book from the beginning, adding her library expertise, verbal flair, and fashion savvy. I could not have survived without Kenneth N. Brown, who has been at my side for previous books with his computer brilliance and his exacting and inspired quest for the vast number of factual details needed for the many facets of the narrative. Particularly grateful am I for his scouring of old Florida and Cuban newspapers. I cannot express enough thanks to Kate Giel, whose assistance and support with finding the right photographs was never less than imaginative, energetic, and professional.
I am most appreciative of my family s part in this book. While writing, I often drew on my beautiful Palm Beach memories with my beloved late husband, Russell Forgan, who for a time spent part of every year in a house on Seaspray Avenue and introduced me to the town s special pl