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But changing taste brought trouble. Pulitzer closed her original company in the mid-1980s after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The label was revived about a decade later after being acquired by Pennsylvania-based Sugartown Worldwide Inc.; Pulitzer was only marginally involved in the new business but continued reviewing new prints from Florida. "When Lilly started the business back in the '60s, she targeted a young customer because she was young," Bradbeer told the AP in 2003. "What we have done is target the daughter and granddaughter of that original customer." Pulitzer herself retired from day-to-day operations in 1993, although she remained a consultant and a muse for the brand. Sugartown Worldwide was bought by Atlanta-based Oxford Industries in 2010. Sales of the Lilly Pulitzer brand were strong in the earnings period that ended Feb. 2. The brand's revenue increased 26 percent to $29.1 million, according to Oxford Industries' earnings report. The company said last week it planned to add four to six new stores each year for its Lilly Pulitzer brand. Pulitzer was born Lilly McKim on Nov. 10, 1931, to a wealthy family in Roslyn, N.Y. In 1952, she married Pete Pulitzer, the grandson of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whose bequest to Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prize.
Pulitzer had three children in quick succession. After the third was born, she had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital
in New York that catered to upscale clientele. A doctor there told her that she needed to find a job. "The doctor there said, 'You're not happy because you're not doing anything,' and I said,
'I don't know how to do anything.' I'd always had everything done for me, always had my nanny and my mummy making up my mind. The doctor said,
'You've got to go out and find something to do,'" Pulitzer told The New Yorker in 2000. Pulitzer gave the same prescription to her friends. If one of them needed something to do, Pulitzer would open a store in her town. The Pulitzers divorced in 1969. Pulitzer's second husband, Enrique Rousseau, died in 1993. "I don't know how to explain what it was like to run my business, the joy of every day," she told Vanity Fair magazine in a story in 2003. "I got a kick every time I went into the shipping department. ... I loved seeing (the dresses) going out the door. I loved them selling in the shop. I liked them on the body. Everything. There's no explaining the fun I had."
[Associated
Press;
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