Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend - Hardcover

Some women brood on their dullness like Chekhov characters staring out windows. What's interesting about Lilly Pulitzer is that she confesses it cheerfully and by so doing persuades us that it might not be true. The case for it can be made, however--she was never known for working the fashion shows with a chrome-steel attitude or swanning around with Paris couturiers. Winter and summer, she liked being in Palm Beach, Fla., where her clothing was a sort of folk art of the very rich, summer clothes for a world where, as she said, ""it's always summer somewhere.""
Now, at 80, a Palm Beach homebody, she is the subject of a short, airy biography by Kathryn Livingston, ""Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend.""
To my surprise, I learned that I kind of like her. Surprise because I grew up with my nose pressed to the window of Lilly Land, but I was looking out, not in, seeking freedom from Connecticut cocktail hours, rich people complaining that they were broke (""totally stoners""), mixed doubles in tennis, and porch parties where women wore hair pulled back as tight as the silk on Christmas-tree balls. Once in a while a man would wear a necktie as a belt, a Brooks Brothers buccaneer. (Wall Street Journal, December 2012)

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 is a must read 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.