Sunday, April 7, 2013

Lillys --- Day 2/92

Walk: Around Home, Back/Forth/Round/About Doing Chores
Distance: ? and 1 hour yoga home practice

Everyone who was a Lilly person has her own Lilly memories.  Mine concern a store on Main Street of our town - which was about 8 blocks long at the time.  As I recall, the name of the store was Marion Nellermoe, and it was the only one in town - or maybe in the whole metropolitan area - that carried Lillies.  And they only arrived in the summer in one or two large shipments.

As summer neared, my friends and I might drop in daily to see if the new Lillys had arrived.  Or our mothers or aunts would do it and tell us what they'd learned.  When the Lillys were in there was a virtual parade to the racks where they hung, and we'd all spend a good part of the day trying on dresses, commenting on each others' try on's until everybody had exactly the right lime green or hot pink or aqua flowered print for her.

I guess this was our comparable to a sewing circle or all the Italian women in the kitchen cooking.  There could be as many as four generations assembled at Nellermoe's because Lillys were for everybody: grandmothers, mothers, daughters, grandchildren.  Throughout the summer we all floated into and around the multi-generational 'tea dances' (another ciwt entry on those) like flower figures from Disney's Fantasia.

And we all looked like complete frumps in the boxy, stiff shifts - but we didn't know that at the time.

RIP -  Lilly Pulitzer (1931- today, 2013)



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/fashion/lilly-pulitzer-socialite-turned-designer-dies-at-81.html?hp

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