Farrell: Beaufort County fans of Lilly Pulitzer have little luck at Target sale
My personal fashion aesthetic falls on the spectrum between that of a 4-year-old girl who loves sparkles and stars -- and insists on dressing herself despite a lack of matching skills -- and that of a frazzled sixth-grade art teacher whose style icon is Mokey from "Fraggle Rock" (because it looks like she's wearing Eileen Fisher).
Never have I considered wearing Lilly Pulitzer, those bright, beachy patterns that are so popular in the South.
Never have I thought about Lilly Pulitzer.
Never have I thought about Lilly Pulitzer so much in one week.
Until recently, that is.
This past weekend I wrote about the unofficial rules for wearing Lilly Pulitzer to the RBC Heritage Presented By Boeing, where the Southern preppy look is in. On Sunday, Lilly fanatics lined up outside the Target in Bluffton -- and at Targets across the country -- before 8 a.m. to liberate the store of all its Lilly For Target merchandise, a long-awaited and short-lived line made by the high-end designer with a low-end price point that only a relative few could get their hands on.
"I was there and didn't get a thing!," Charlotte Law of Beaufort posted on Facebook. "Walked in at 8:05 and it was g-o-n-e!"
"I was there as well," posted Fripp Langford, also of Beaufort. "Got there at 7:45 and there were at least 100 people ahead of me. I think only the first 10 people inside got things since there was only one size of most items."
Pulitzer's own daughter was even among those left empty-handed, according to The Sun Sentinel in Florida. She had wanted a Lilly Pulitzer beach chair but it had sold out online, she told the paper. She was thrilled with the sale itself, though, and thought her mother would've been pleased too.
"She would have loved the fact that everybody wanted to get something, a piece of Lilly," Liza Pulitzer told The Sun Sentinel.
Among the fanatics -- or the Lilly Girls as they call themselves -- were the resellers. The ones who were there only to buy what they could and turn a quick profit on eBay, frustrating those who were there for the love of the product.
On Thursday afternoon, more than 30,000 Lilly For Target items were still for sale on eBay, some of them originating from sellers in Beaufort County. I contacted several of the local sellers through eBay and did not hear back from any of them.
"It really hurts those that were looking forward to buying Lilly for the first time," said Amy Lane of Beaufort, who was able to score five Lilly For Target items off her wish-list when the sale went live online after midnight Sunday. "It upsets me and I wish that people wouldn't buy the items from eBay, but there's no way of controlling it, unfortunately."
Target, in reaction to the profit-seekers (the profit-seekers that aren't Target, that is), is limiting returns of the Lilly line to 14 days, as opposed to its typical 90 days, in hopes of preventing the gluttonous from trotting their unsold wares (because, hello, you flooded the market) back to the store.
The ultimate irony of the Lilly For Target saga might be that when the line was first announced some Lilly fans loudly protested the decision to "cheapen" the line and make it more accessible to ... let's just say "Target customers." Instead of hitting the mass market, though, the low-end line has become even more exclusive.
The original outcry got ugly, though, which is weird because the Lilly fans I've talked to over the last two weeks have been among the sweetest people I've met.
"Lilly herself was a very kind person and would have wanted anyone to have access to her gorgeous dresses," said Lane, who became a fan when she got her first Lilly day planner in high school (her current planner is in Tusk in Sun). "I know as a fresh-out-of-college girl myself, I'm eager to jump at a great-priced Lilly. If anything, I think the collaboration is going to make more people aware of the brand and just make it a bigger Lilly-loving community."
A "community" of clothes lovers?
Yes. A community of clothes lovers.
Lane, who is active in Lilly Pulitzer-related groups on Facebook, recently hung out with a girl from Orangeburg that she met through one of the groups.
"We met for drinks at Q (on Bay) and talked about our love for Lilly and other common interests."
It was also through a Facebook group that Lane found out that the Lilly line had gone live on the Target website early Sunday morning.
"I sat down on my couch and started ordering up a storm," she said. "There was adrenaline pumping. Everything that was going on around me I completely ignored. The links kept getting posted, and I had to check out on my items immediately."
I asked Lane if her husband "got" her obsession with Lilly.
"(He) has embraced it in a way that he understands. I'm a Lilly girl and he is a gun guy. We've found our balance, I suppose.
"He gets ammo ... I get bright-colored scarves and shift dresses."
Follow columnist and senior editor Liz Farrell at twitter.com/elizfarrell and facebook.com/elizfarrell.
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This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 7:12 PM with the headline "Farrell: Beaufort County fans of Lilly Pulitzer have little luck at Target sale."