A typical Lilly Pulitzer print |
Not when it comes to clothes. The Washington Post fashion
critic excoriated the Lilly Pulitzer for Target line and the brand in general. She admitted that “The Lilly Pulitzer line is
a coup, but what the retailer’s really selling isn’t pretty.” It was a
successful retailing debut which sold everything around the country within five
minutes and jammed its website, while some of the items showed up on eBay at
three times the price. http://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-post/20150421/282668980893874/TextView
She declared, “Lilly Pulitzer is not fashion. It is clothes.
The classic Lilly Pulitzer dress comes in shrill shades of yellow and pink that
are vaguely infantilizing,” a preppy line you can see from far away, “50 paces”
to be exact. I think the middle class is
not interested in buying fashion, or high fashion for that matter. They want to
buy clothes that are comfortable, reasonably priced, in bright colors that make
the wearer happy, a Floridian casual that only the relaxed southerners can
truly understand.
“Anyone can work hard and save up enough cash to go out and
purchase a Chanel suit or a Gucci handbag. A devoted student of Vogue can
cobble together a personal style that speaks to her public identity,” the
critic continued.
This is the problem with rich people who live in a bubble,
completely disconnected from reality. Nobody in their right mind would save
cash to buy an elitist, snobby Chanel suit that is uncomfortable, tight, and
impractical in an economy in which many people have a hard time paying their
bills and buying decent food for their families. Most Americans do not dress
according to Vogue or carry around real Gucci bags when $5,000 is better spent
to help the family survive a few months.
It is not true that Lilly Pulitzer represents something that
“money cannot buy.” Lilly is just comfortable, relaxed, and reasonably priced
everyday clothes. A buyer does not have to forgo important purchases in order
to buy snooty high fashion. The preppy
appeal to the college crowd is just that, floral and happy colors appropriate
for someone so young who still sees the world with innocent eyes. There is
nothing “one-percentish” or rarified “clubby” about the Lilly clothes.
What is wrong with people on a budget buying colorful
prints, creative designs, and clothes that make them happy? Is it jealousy for
a successful marketing strategy? Are shoppers on a low budget not having “discerning
tastes” because the Chanel-promoting one-percenters think so? Is it better to
buy high-priced designer jeans with holes and rips in them?
Downplaying and ridiculing the entrepreneurship of the Lilly
brand and of her now-deceased founder as “a bored, rich house-wife who had
started an orange juice stand in Palm Beach, Florida” is definitely not going
to win any converts from the middle class to the rarified upper class of Chanel-wearing
elites. There was nothing wrong with the entrepreneurial Lilly Pulitzer
purchasing the fabric at Woolworth’s and having her dressmaker sew simple
chemise dresses. Many American women bought their fabrics and Simplicity dress
patterns at Woolworth’s and Hancock’s and then made their own clothes through the
early eighties.
No average American woman in her right mind is going to wear
the high-end designer clothes which are not meant to cover someone’s body, they
are too short, too tight, too revealing; these clothes are meant to scream to
the world, look at me, I have money, I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars
on my high-end fashion, I flaunt my wealth this way, and I live a life filled
with expensive adornments on my body.
The middle class women do not wait for a sale at Neiman Marcus;
they go to Target to buy a $40 Lilly Pulitzer dress or to the flagship store
for a $200 one. Yes, the critic is right, “Lilly Pulitzer is a classic. It is
always hanging on a rack somewhere, everywhere, in all of its pineapple-print,
feel-good, preppy psychedelia.” Ask any southern college girl and they will
agree that a Lilly dress on a sunny football weekend is the best. Ask anybody
else what they would like to wear to the beach or to a picnic and the answer is
Lilly clothes.
I think that most women prefer the inexpensive, feel-good,
and colorful “psychedelia” of Lilly Pulitzer over the overpriced, snobby
elitist “psychedelia” of ridiculous high-fashion. I personally remove the label of any clothing
as it bothers my sensitive skin. We don’t wear labels to affirm who we are – we
know that the handmade, “high-class promised quality” is still “stitched just
so” in a couture sweat shop by Chinese hands.
On that note, I am going to wear my light pink Lilly t-shirt
which only set me back $40 and makes me happy to wear. Clothes do not make a
person good, exceptional, or bad; they just create an illusory image and give a
false impression of the wearer. We don’t need a branding or “public identity”
expressed through expensive high fashion, we want to be ourselves.
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