Items From Lily Pulitzer's Estate To Be Auctioned Off

WEST PALM BEACH (AP) — Art and furniture from the estate of preppy fashion icon Lilly Pulitzer will hit the auction block next weekend.

CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald reports that highlights of the auction include Italian painted furniture, garden ornaments, ceramics and paintings by American artists.

Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in West Palm Beach will host the sale Feb. 22.

Pulitzer, who married into the famous newspaper family, got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. A rich housewife with time to spare and a husband who owned orange groves, she opened a juice stand in 1959, and asked her seamstress to make dresses in colorful prints that would camouflage fruit stains.

The dresses hung on a pipe behind her juice stand and soon outsold her drinks. The company's dresses, developed with the help of partner Laura Robbins, a former fashion editor, soon caught on.

Jacqueline Kennedy, who attended boarding school with Pulitzer, even wore one of the sleeveless shifts in a Life magazine photo spread, and matriarch Rose Kennedy and one of her teenage granddaughters were once reported to have bought nearly identical versions together.

The signature Lilly palette features tongue-in-cheek jungle and floral prints in blues, pinks, light greens, yellow and orange — the colors of a Florida vacation.

Pulitzer retired in 1993 but remained a muse for the brand.

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