Before Lilly Pulitzer was a classic American brand, she was a trailblazing innovator: The fashion label’s namesake was Lilly Pulitzer (1931-2013), an entrepreneur, designer, socialite and granddaughter-in-law of Joseph Pulitzer, the publishing magnate and founder of the Pulitzer Prize. She forged her own path to create a line of modern resort wear inspired by the Palm Beach aesthetic. Pentagram’s Paula Scher and team built on this legacy to refresh the Lilly Pulitzer brand identity for a contemporary audience. Here, Paula recounts the process behind the project.
Lilly Pulitzer is a timeless brand in that the label has always had a presence, and a dedicated following, that has remained remarkably consistent over the years. I knew Lilly Pulitzer’s stylish, colorful dresses from seeing them on beach vacations and trips to Florida, but I didn’t know much about her as a person. But when my team began our research, we quickly learned she was a true creative original and a visionary entrepreneur who had a brilliant idea and turned it into a phenomenon.
You’ve heard the adage about turning lemons into lemonade; Lilly turned oranges into dresses. For her own amusement Lilly started selling juice from a roadside stand at her husband’s orange grove in Palm Beach. She realized she needed something to wear that would hide the juice stains and asked her dressmaker to sew a simple cotton sleeveless dress with colorful patterns to camouflage the splashes. These distinctive floral motifs were originally hand printed. Over the years the patterns have been modernized, but they still have the fun and vibrancy the brand is known for.
The bright patterned dresses became a sensation, and later a fashion classic. Lilly had attended Miss Porter’s School with Jacqueline Bouvier; later, as First Lady, Jackie Kennedy wore the dresses and helped make them an icon of the 1960s. Lilly also created the “mother and daughter” dresses that were incredibly popular during the period.
Today Lilly Pulitzer is sold in over 60 of its own retail stores and online, as well in over 100 independently owned boutiques. The resort wear brand is of course still especially loved from Palm Beach to Nantucket, and in your favorite resort and coastal towns.
It’s intimidating to redesign a logo for a business founded by a fashion icon. The Lilly Pulitzer logo has always been a script, purportedly based on her handwriting. Over the years there have been several script logos, the most recent being very round and curvy.
Like other heritage brands, Lilly Pulitzer has periodically updated its logo and evolved it over time yet still kept it grounded in the company’s roots. The logo has consistently been a script typeface, but it has appeared in various iterations. We encountered four different ones that were used over the years.
On a visit to the Lilly Pulitzer flagship store in Palm Beach Gardens, I saw a sign in a closet which had a script with Lilly’s name that was never used as her logo. The script was strong, simple, powerful and beautiful. Like other versions of the logo, it evoked handwriting, helping to build a personal connection with the brand’s customers. We adapted it as the design for the new logo.
Other ads we found in the store had a taller, more angular type; some from the early 1970s were more circular, with in-house nicknames like “Loopy Lilly” and “The Lilly.” We incorporated characteristics from several of these logos into the new wordmark. The typography is taller and thinner, to make it more manageable as a contemporary script. The logo can be angled on an upward slant or appear on a straight horizontal baseline. The full name may be used, or just an isolated “Lilly.”
We then extended the lively, active feel of the new wordmark into a full identity system, where the script logos can be built into dynamic graphic patterns. Packaging like bags and boxes incorporate the Palm Beach toile print. The script is balanced by the secondary font, Sprig Sans (from Faire Type Foundry).
Lilly famously said, “Everything is possible with sunshine and a little pink.” We like to think she would love the exuberant look of the new identity.
-Paula Scher
