By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current
Historian and author Leslie Goddard will portray the American entrepreneur, fashion designer and socialite Lilly Pulitzer at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 5, at the Geneseo Public Library.
Goddard is known in the area for her character portrayals as Lucille Ball, First Ladies Mary Todd Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, in addition to Amelia Earhart and Audrey Hepburn.
She writes and lectures on American cultural history, with particular expertise in women’s history. She has a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master’s in Museum Studies. In addition to her own stint as a Marshall Field’s sales associate, her grandfather worked at the State Street store for 26 years, serving as merchandise manager for linens and manager of the Far Eastern buying office.
ABOUT LILLY PULITZER:
Lily Pulitzer eloped with Herbert Pulitzer Jr., (the grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher after whom the Pulitzer Prize is named) in 1950. The couple settled in Palm Beach, FL, shortly after their marriage. They owned several orange groves, where Pulitzer eventually opened a fruit juice stand. While working at the stand, she found that squeezing juice made a mess of her clothes, so she asked her dressmaker to design a dress that would camouflage the stains. Customers loved her dresses, so she began to see them at the fruit juice stand. Soon, she was selling more dresses than juice. This led to her focusing on dress design and her dresses became known as her “Lillys.”
Pulitzer became president of her own company, Lilly Pulitzer, Inc. in 1959. The main factory was in Miami, and the fabrics were purchased by the Key West Hand Print Fabrics Company. Here dresses were very popular from the 1960’s to the early 1980’s, and were worn by Jacqueline Kennedy and members of the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt families. After Jackie Kennedy was featured in Life magazine, wearing one of Pulitzer’s shifts, many preppy ladies followed her lead. Goddard later stated that the first shift dress that Jackie Kennedy was photographed in, was made of kitchen curtains.
By 1984, the entire clothing operation closed.
That was not the end of Lilly Pulitzer designs.
In 1993, the rights to the brand were purchase by Sugartown Worldwide inc., who contacted Pulitzer in the hopes of reviving the operation. Today, the company maintains Lilly Pulitzer Signature Stores. The brand also is sold in major department stores such as Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. The company is now owned by Oxford Industries Inc.
Lilly and Herbert Pulitzer had three children. The couple divorced in 1969, and shortly after, she married Enrique Rousseau Enrique, who died in 1993. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 81.