Recently reopened Lilly Pulitzer store celebrating ‘Christmas’ ahead of RBC Heritage

Anne Kacmarski remembers people trying to wedge around — under — the ladder holding the contractor near the entrance of her store.

Kacmarski, manager of S.M. Bradford Co. in Hilton Head Island’s Village at Wexford, was shocked.

Did people miss the sign out front? “Closed for Renovation,” it read, back in January through early March.

Did they miss — how could they miss? — the giant signs covering the store’s windows? “MAKEOVER in PROGRESS,” read one, which sported a hand-drawn picture of two women behind dressing room doors, their heads and feet visible. And at the bottom of the sign, written in pink, tidy cursive, a most important word.

“Lilly.”

S.M. Bradford Co. has been selling Lilly Pulitzer apparel for 15 years, according to Claudia Emmert, whose family owns the store. The brand is known for its bright colors — greens and blues and, of course, pink — and, in Emmert’s words, its “beachy” look. But recently Lilly Pulitzer underwent a makeover, which prompted Emmert’s store to have one of its own.

S.M. Bradford reopened March 6 with new chandeliers, fresh wallpaper and even more Lilly Pulitzer — and just in time for the RBC Heritage.

“We love this time of year,” Emmert said Thursday morning, referring to Hilton Head’s PGA Tour event that begins next week. “This is when we bulk up our merchandise. We call it Christmas season.”

When the store resumed business in early March, it did so with a larger Lilly inventory. An exclusive Lilly inventory. In fact, the only brand that’s currently available at S.M. Bradford’s Wexford location is ... you guessed it.

“Lilly pure,” Kacmarski calls it. That’s official Lilly lingo.

Before Pulitzer was a fashion designer, she was a Florida socialite who worked at a juice stand. Emmert told the story about how Pulitzer used to wear bright colors and loud prints to disguise juice stains she’d pick up at work. She turned those clothes into popular Palm Beach resort wear. At the time of her death in April 2013, the New York Times reported her brand brought in over $15 million during “its height in the 1960s and 1970s.”

Emmert says the brand is now tapping back into the 1960s. “Sixties glamor,” she calls it. “Sixties modern.”

S.M. Bradford has followed suit.

Gone is the “islandy” look. No more palm trees or cabana stripes on the interior. Now, chandeliers hang from the ceiling. There’s no bedding showroom in the back of the store anymore, no more Lilly home decor.

The focus is clothes and accessories. Still bright and colorful, but, as Emmert says, appropriate for the office or a wedding.

When S.M. Bradford was close for remodeling, Kacmarski remembers people being scared.

“People came into Currents” — S.M. Bradford’s sister store — “freaking out, thinking we were closed,” she said.

And she chuckled when she remembered the would-be customers trying to squeeze past the contractor or walk under his ladder.

None of them must have thought about it being bad luck.

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Recently reopened Lilly Pulitzer store celebrating ‘Christmas’ ahead of RBC Heritage."