It was a split skirt, with white pique undershorts and white pique along the edges. But the print! Bright pink and tomato-red lions outlined in crimson, their manes rippling from their heads like the flame-fingered tongues of the sun. Lilly Pulitzer's play clothes were playful, adding drama to the whimsy and triumph of one's sporty endeavors.

I was five or six. It was my first golf tournament, The Cleveland Plain Dealer City Junior, and I was dressed to impress. Not just any shorts set! No, I wore Lilly—and I felt like a shiny new Eldorado rolling down the goat patch fairways of some crummy Par 3 course. 

It worked. The Coco Chanel of pink and green, lemon and tangerine, turquoise and lavender, with her knack for joie de vivre and her keen sense for how people move, turned a random kid into a champion (or so I thought, holding a trophy almost as tall as I was). Not only did I win first place in the 5-7 age group by 11 strokes, but a photographer took pictures and I landed on the front of The Plain Dealer's sports section, demonstrating the transformative powers of the Technicolor resort wear. Lilly Pulitzer, the young Palm Beach society housewife who turned juice stains into a multimillion-dollar industry, was an alchemist!

Lillian McKim Pulitzer Rousseau was every bit as exuberant as the styles she conjured. Always up for an adventure, be it screening movies on bed sheets hung in her backyard, dancing the Twist by the pool, or jumping on a propeller plane to Key West to check on her new prints, the schoolmate of Jackie Bouvier became a national sensation when the First Lady did a photo shoot for Life romping in the Atlantic in one of Lilly's colorful, formless, A-line shift dresses.

Suddenly, Camelot was affordable for the gentry who aspired to Mrs. Kennedy's chic but couldn't afford the Chanels and Oleg Cassinis she wore to presidential events. But just as importantly, Lilly liberated frumpy WASP fashion, especially its sportswear, from muted, boxy styles by creating a sexy, tropical line that gave any woman a little bit of je ne sais something!

Tangoing foxes, cocktailing crocodiles, rabbits and penguins and bears and lions and all sorts of sporting totems littered the folds of her all-cotton clothing. And the flowers! Oversized hibiscuses, hydrangeas, lilies of the valley, geraniums, carnations, roses, and daisies in dizzying combinations.

Beginning with the Via Parigi mother ship of a store where the legend herself would work behind the counter, Lilly swept across the nation. Shops opened where Lilly's newly divorced girlfriends needed jobs; men wanted in on the action, and blazers, pants, ties, and cumberbunds were added to the line.

It was all so merry, so bright. But times changed, styles evolved. Lilly folded her tent in the mid-'80s, and that seemed to be it. Then a decade later a trio of backward-looking, forward-minded prepsters approached Mrs. Rousseau (as she was known after her second marriage to a dashing Cuban who'd fled Castro) about reigniting the line. They convinced her that people seemed to be looking for fashion that was classic, but not stuffy. She agreed, and the Lilly returned. That was twenty years and many, many light pink giraffes, romping elephants, and striped cabanas ago.

She was fond of saying "It's always summer somewhere." Certainly that attitude fueled the perennial demand for her clothes, whether sundresses, bikinis, capri pants, Bermuda shorts, or yes, her classic shifts. But more than the comfort, there was the joy. Beyond the garden of peasant skirts, cocktail dresses, and Crayola-colored jeans was the inescapable attitude adjustment that came with putting a Lilly Pulitzer on.

For Lilly it was always about fun. When first introducing herself to Jay Mulvaney (who went on to co-write her two home entertaining books), she declared, "I'm Lilly. I don't wear shoes or panties ... Get used to it." And she told the sister owners of C. Orrico, when she selected them to carry her clothes in Palm Beach for the relaunch, "You're going to love selling Lilly! Snobs don't wear them; people like Jackie and her maid do."

When she died last month at eighty-one, she was in her overgrown tropical lair, surrounded by cats and friends, family and flowers. All these were celebrated at her funeral at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, where her son, Peter, and her grandchildren made people laugh through their tears at the high spirits and wide-open heart that defined the woman behind the iconic American clothes.

All one had to do was look at all the prints pouring out onto the sawgrass lawn to know that Lilly came to live out loud, and left a mark that you couldn't miss if you tried.