Iconography: Lilly Pulitzer

While I am neither a Southern sorority belle who wastes my afternoons with rich mint juleps at the horse races nor an intoxicated lady of a bygone era who leisurely lunches with her closest friends as well as enemies, toes slightly stained with white sands from the beaches of North Hampton, I have always admired the brazen and cheerful sensibilities of Lilly Pulitzer. Like those archetypes, made more notorious and recognizable for their identical costumes of tropical greens and pinks, her designs were sweet and charming, elegant enough, and never demure. At times seemingly juvenile and pedestrian, or at least superficially so, for me, instead, the exude an air of whim, and in some cases, a sort of devil-may-care exuberance in the face of taste and refinery. The bright neons and outlandish tesselating pelicans and flamingos have never been quite my style, but I do love the perpetual lazy summer life of decadence and daiquiris that the quintessential dresses seem to promote. Today, swathed in prototypical black, I give pause; she will be missed.

(images taken from Pinterest)