The Daily Feather — Commando

“For many people, the name Lilly Pulitzer conjures up images of an affluent, prim-and-proper woman on her way to the beach; not a free-spirited bohemian who loved martinis, loathed underwear (she rarely wore it), and toted her pet monkey around town. But Lilly Pulitzer had a penchant for surprising people, and the story of how she launched her namesake brand is no different: it began in the confines of a psychiatric hospital.” Such was my curiosity about how the story ended after that cliffhanger, I almost subscribed to Town & Country. Luckily, Southern Hospitality recapped its fellow periodical’s 2017 feature two years after it was first published. That’s how I learned that in 1959, Mrs. Pulitzer’s (the socialite married into that Pulitzer family) doctor suggested an antidote for her postpartum depression: A job. Given her husband owned an orchard, she opened a juice stand. Irked at the stains, Pulitzer envisioned bold and energetic color bombs hiding the spots. “The rest” wouldn’t be history until 1962, when Jackie Kennedy was photographed in a polka-dot Lilly shift dress on the island of Capri, Italy. As Pulitzer recalled, after that, business “took off like a zingo.”

Surrounded as I was by ladies in Lilly wares, a weekend in West Palm Beach left me curious about how the fashion icon had attained her cult-like status. That said, other than the addition of the ocean punctuated by a visit with my best friend from my single days in New York, I could just as well have stayed in Dallas as West Palm is also teeming with tax refugees. In Texas, it’s mostly Californians. In Florida, most escapees are New Yorkers though one notable Chicagoan has generated quite the stir. Green policies introduced in blue states have amplified the onerous cost of doing business amidst high taxes and accelerated the flight to prosperity.