We all know that Lilly prints are constantly inspired by the sea…and sand…and sun. And what’s better than sitting on the beach and soaking in the rays with a fun beverage in your hand? (with those little pink drink umbrellas, of course!)  Well the print studio always gets a liiiiittle kookier during Summer line planning, (as beach vacays, fun drinks, food and friends are what they think about) so it’s no surprise that we looked to our friends at Gosling’s for some inspiration for our Summer ’11 line.

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I went straight to our Dress Man, Abraham, for the details behind the stunning Battenburg lace — seen (for the first time ever!!) in the latest Summer delivery of cocktail dresses from Lilly.  Here’s what he had to say about this gorgeous new fabrication …

Battenburg lace is lace created by woven tape that is hand stitched together into intricate patterns. Our pattern art work was hand drawn by Victoria Davis and I to create a truly Lilly Lace. Each panel is created by hand; giving each garment a truly unique, one-of-kind quality. The pattern was designed to flatter the figure and curve with the body. The new Marie-Kate style is a great figure-friendly shape and the Bowen is the ultimate strapless dress- we love it so much!

Abraham also gave us a quick Battenburg history lesson which sounded suspiciously similar to this.   All you really need to know?  These dresses are truly beautiful and will cause you to looooong for lace!

So when the print team was in Winter Park last year, they were CHALLENGED by a customer (*ahem* Chris Richards- we’re looking at you!!) to bring back the Streaker print. (dare we say anything about the fact that it took a man to challenge us to bring back one of our naughtiest prints?!) All of a sudden, the topic of…being nude (in print, thank you) …was everywhere!

Emails came pouring in…please do the streaker print!; we love the streaker print! Ok, slight exaggeration BUT…Summer makes us so happy we want to throw ON our Lilly and then RIP IT OFF so we cannonball into the  [insert body of water here] pool, lake, ocean. Toiles have become a favorite around here and secretly the print team loves them because we can hide soooo many fun things in them!

So viola- the Streaker print reinvented! Look closely, you never know what you might find!

Wear them instead!  Seagulls get such a bad rap. Perhaps they deserve it, they can be quite a nuisance at the beach, but right about now, I’d take that summer sound over the white noise here at the office!  So let’s celebrate the seagull this season with two splashy, summer prints – Flock of Seagulls (above) and Ride the Wave (below)!

Check out Flock of Seagulls in our hottest summer dress- the Marisa, as well as Delia dress with the Hotty Pink embroidery.

Ride the Wave comes in one of our Summer favorites, the Sullivan dress as well as the oh-so-cute Avery skirt with a Hotty Pink contrasting belt.

(seagulls making their mark on your dress in print is waaaaay cuter then the alternative!!)

Hi everyone! Summer has just shipped and I wanted to give you a little behind the scenes on how it all came to be. It’s a long one but preeety revealing (and funny!) Every season I start dreaming…what should the inspiration be? What colors do we want to be wearing? What do we want in the prints?!?!? What can we do that’s pretty…cheeky!?!?!?!

It was last year at this time that we started dreaming about Summer 2011. As we are celebrating Lilly Loves the Arts, Summer was planned to celebrate music and dance. Ummm, I am a huge dancer. Side note: Karen in our sweaters department just had to teach me how to Dougie. It’s a problem. Aaaaanyway… I have always loved music (right now I am listening to Pandora and have made my own Talking Heads station…awesome). I have a million and one stories about going to concerts, being obsessed with bands – I had a HUGE thing for John Taylor from Duran Duran in 6th grade. Doesn’t everyone have that ‘first concert’ story? Or the first slow dance with a boy? (Furman tennis camp. Madonna’s Crazy For You. Carter from Atlanta. Esprit dress.) So the print department wanted to get aaaalll the fun music stories from everyone in the Pink Palace so I sent the email below, COMPANY WIDE (it’s amazing sometimes that I don’t get fired) to get the real juice. And of course, it wouldn’t have been fair for me to ask for everyone’s music memories without giving my own…

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1. Cherry Begonias 2. Blue Eyed Girl 3. Twirlers 4. Lilly Fields Forever

Flowers are a girl’s best friend, right? Oh no, wrong; diamonds are a girl’s best friend but we girls DO love flowers.  We love giving them, we certainly love getting them, some of us even like growing them but Lilly girls- well we love wearing them, of course!  And we happen to think that Lilly flowers, the kind you *ahem* wear, make a fabulous gift for Mother’s Day.  And when I say think, I mean we actually sat down & made a list as to why we think the floral prints from our first Summer delivery make an unforgettable gift and will leave a lasting impression on Mom…

Top 5 Reasons Lilly flowers beat real flowers for Mother’s Day…

1. We’re preeety sure your mom won’t be allergic to these flowers
2. No annoying stamen stains (don’t you hate when that happens?!?)
3. Our flowers won’t wilt, drop petals all over the place & then die on you
4. No stinky flower water to toss or vase to clean afterwards
5. Your mom can enjoy our flowers for years and years to come (and think about you each and every time she wears them!)

We’re pretty convincing, right?  And forget about getting her that puppy that you she’s always wanted- go with Lilly flowers and you both win.

As we hit our third season of Lilly Loves the Arts, we get to a crowd favorite. Get ready to SHAKE IT, sing along, and camp out for tickets…Summer 2011 is all about MUSIC AND DANCE. For Lilly Lovers, Summer is certainly the time to get a little loose. (wait…that may be all the time, oh well!)  From outdoor music festivals to fireworks exploding over crashing waves, Summer music makes us smile- just like wearing our Lilly does. We have all been thinking about the sound track for summer 11…might there be a little summer lovin’?…some beatles playing in the background?…how about a reggae festival? The theme is TURN IT UP!  Hot Fun in the Summertime and that means we are going to let the Lilly flag fly in classic styles dripping or swimming or dancing in color print and pattern.

We kick off summer with a delivery dubbed “Walking on Sunshine,” that is devoted to all of the contemporary music of…well…recently! Summer music is laid back and relaxed but filled with surprises. Color is happy (isn’t it always?!) with bright Summer pinks, greens and blues popping off of clean whites.  Summer is the time for white to take center stage- it allows all of our Lilly’s to look fresh and Summer snappy!

Hello Ocean! Hello Beach! and Hello Blues! This is a sneak peak of our late May delivery we’re calling “Under the Boardwalk” for reasons that are obvious and reasons we might not want our mother’s to know about. Just sayin’!  Hang in there another month when we unveil our shimmyy, shelliest prints that help celebrate the amazing months spent on the coast!

Summer debuts on lillypulitzer.com this Thursday and hit stores the end of this week.  Make a point to stop in and see our greatest hits from our first delivery!

Special. Unique. Dare we say…Extraordinary! As you know we design every print, every pattern, every stripe, every embroidery in our SPECIAL UNIQUE EXTRAORDINARY print studio. Most of the time, we make these print what we call ‘all over’. So it’s just a print (ummm, as if ‘just a print’ could ever describe a lilly print but that is a topic for another day!). Lately, as you may have seen, we have started making our prints even more SPECIAL UNIQUE and EXTRAORDINARY by taking bits of them out of the “all over” setting and placing them on the dress. It just makes them MORE SPECIAL UNIQUE and EXTRAORDINARY. I mean, we are always wanting to delight you. And for us, MORE is exactly as it sounds…DELIGHTFULLY MORE. Then somehow by making it less of an all over print, these become even more special. How can that be? Let’s chalk it up to the magic of the print studio.

We’re very excited to welcome Susan Danish, Executive Director of The Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc., into our Guest House today.  Building better communities through service is something very near and dear to Lilly’s heart and the Junior League and their members embody that ideal so partnering with the Junior League to create a custom Murfee was an easy decision.  We asked Susan to tell us a little more about the Junior League so we could share it with all of you…

Tell us a little about the Junior League

The first Junior League was founded in New York City in 1901 and today there are 292 Leagues in four countries – Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are 155,000 members. Junior Leagues are organizations of women who, through their volunteer leadership and activities, work to improve their communities. Each Junior League is a volunteer led and run nonprofit organization that assesses the most pressing needs in its community and then either creates a program or partners with other organizations, businesses and / or local government to create or build programs that address those needs. Through the decades Leagues have tackled issues like domestic violence, women and alcohol, early childhood education and literacy, human trafficking, childhood obesity, the environment and more.

Junior League members have gone on to found nonprofits, sit on nonprofit boards, run nonprofits, hold appointed or elected offices. Today in the U.S., there are Junior League members in the Senate and House, and one of our most prominent members was the first women appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor. Junior Leagues are diverse organizations who welcome all women who share their passion for giving back and doing so in a meaningful way.

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We know you love hearing the insider stories behind our prints and we love showcasing the amazing work our print designers do on a daily basis. (It’s not very Lilly-like to brag but this stuff is cooool!) Our latest delivery celebrates the fine art of block and stamp printing. And like all of our prints, these were created by hand… literally, down to the carved linoleum and wood blocks used in this technique that give these incredible prints a chic yet slightly imperfect look!

Check out the above creation of our Punch Pink Stamped print made by our beloved print designer, Rebecca! She spent all afternoon carving this layout. Can you spot the giraffes hidden in the leaves?? Flash forward from block carving, to print, to amazingly fun spring styles. Wear this art with a smile knowing so much love went into creating it for you!

And be sure to check out the Worth Blue Pressed print by Jeff and the Painter’s Block and Multi Rollin prints by Stacey.