Image Credit: www.weheartit.com
To be completely honest with you, I didn't know who Lilly Pulitzer was until she died. The first time I heard of her, well, her brand, was through either Elle or Blair Fowler's videos about organisation, which is pretty sad. One of them was showing an agenda with a vibrant and really joyful pattern on it that I immediately fell in love with. So when I found out that she died, I immediately went to look up everything about her, her life, her collections, and most importantly, what she stood for.
I'm actually really obsessed with the brand's mission and I think Lilly's story is just incredible. From what I've read, she's this cheerful spirit and it clearly shows through in her designs and her infectious knack for creating iconic prints remains present throughout her many years as a designer. I just really love how the brand that she built strives to be different and unique. Plus, it's the perfect combination of art and fashion and whenever I come across something like that, I'm immediately attracted to it because those are the things that I love most. The fact that they have a team of artists on hand at all times to transfer a concept, inspiration into a print is just incredibly. Honestly, just the fact that they love painting as a brand is just enough for me.
The first word that comes to mind when I first saw a "Lilly" (the term used for a dress designed by Lilly) was "summer." Her designs literally look like a summer dinner party exploded on them in the best possible way. Summer is my favourite season as a whole (fall's my favourite fashion season) so to have a brand that literally looks like summer all year long is pretty cool. That's why I think her quote, "It's always summer somewhere." is just perfect. To me, summer is the part of the year that represents freedom (I'm a teenager in school, forgive me) and just fun. Just thinking that somewhere in the world, it's summer at the moment makes me think that my summer isn't so far away, even if I'm supposed to get hit by a snow storm tomorrow... Aw well.
Image Credit: www.livingwithlibby.com
To me, it's pretty freaking amazing how she rose to fame when Jackie Kennedy, a former classmate, wore her dress and basically and unintentionally launched Lilly's fashion career. Her life was quite serendipitous (haha, I love that word so much). Success in the fashion industry depends quite a bit on luck and I'm so glad that Lilly was so lucky because otherwise, I wouldn't have the opportunity to sit at my computer screen, completely awestruck by the brilliance of the majority of her patterns and prints (if it wasn't clear, I really like doing this). This might not be the case for everyone, but what really attracted to me and resonated with me when I first checkout the Lilly's was not the actual shape or silhouette of the clothing, which to be honest isn't like my all-time favourite or anything (except for the iconic shift dresses) but the prints. They're really something special.
Her death really was tragedy - I was looking forward to seeing more of her designs and more of her now that I knew about her. I really do hope that her brand will live on without her and I'm really kicking myself for not having known of her sooner. May Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau rest in peace.
Thank you for reading!
- J
No comments:
Post a Comment