Lilly Pulitzer for Target: The Underlying Story

Photo by @rachelcohn22 (Twitter)

Before I moved to the North Shore, I’d never even heard of Lilly Pulitzer. I’d seen gaudy floral print shifts on my mother and her friends in the ‘60s, but having grown up in rural Central Illinois, I’m fairly confident that they were from K-Mart and not Lilly Pulitzer. The only designer label I remember my friends talking about was the tag on the back pocket of a pair of Levi’s. These days I do quite a bit of my shopping at thrift stores. If I have anything with a designer label, it probably set me back less than ten bucks.

Yesterday, Target launched a limited collection of Lilly Pulitzer clothing and home decor. I’d heard about it. I didn’t care, but apparently my well-to-do set neighbors did. 

I subscribe to a local marketplace list on Facebook. By the time I was awake yesterday morning, that Facebook list was full of Lilly items already marked up by 75-100% of what the listers had paid for them that very morning. As the day went on, there were more and more listings and then I learned that Target had sold out of everything Lilly in less than ten minutes. The items popped up on eBay almost instantly as well. Thousands and thousands of them.

Prior to the launch, preppy sorority types had whined that the elitist designer had sold out to Target, but yesterday, post-launch, the Target clothes were fetching prices nearly equal to the prices of the ‘real’ Lilly clothes.

I was disgusted and angry and I couldn’t really figure out why. I couldn’t care less about the ugly clothes. Why would I care if other people cared that much? Why would I care about preppy sorority types devoted to their resort-wear idol? These aren’t my people.

Photo: @amzbls (Twitter)

They aren’t my people. These are people who have no idea how I scrape together money for groceries and gas because it’s expensive to live on the North Shore on a teacher’s salary. These are women who don’t have to work. They go to lunch at the country club while I’m at school teaching their children. I don’t want their lives. Why am I angry?

I’m angry, but only in part, with those women went to Target for the sole purpose of scooping up all the pink and lime-green Lilly they could shove in their carts with the single purpose of making more money with it.

Not that I’d want that ugly crap anyway. I don’t. 

I’m not as angry with those women I am at Target, who knowingly created this phenomenon, likely for the sheer publicity of it all rather than the purported intent of bringing designer items to the ninety-nine percent of us who couldn’t begin to afford the regular Lilly line.

I'm not the only one angry and disgusted. My friends are equally outraged and they complained on the marketplace list. Arguments ensued between the haves and the have-nots. One woman actually suggested that the items had been purchased in order to resell them as a favor to those who could not be at Target for the ten minutes that they were available and that the mark-up was fair compensation for the trouble.

I repeat: We, the have-nots really didn't want the stuff anyway. So why are we angry?

We’re angry because the haves win again. Money wins. They got stuff we can’t have, whether we want it or not, and they got it at a place that is supposed to be affordable. Target used to be a place I could go and get what I needed at a reasonable price, but now it’s just another corporation that is part of the big problem.

Target, most recently, has run roughshod over my neighborhood. I live in an unincorporated area of the North Shore where the working-class people live. It’s a nice neighborhood, and significantly less expensive than the million-dollar homes on the lake a mile or so east. Target bullied its way into my neighborhood, bringing with it a couple of strip malls, thus destroying the bike path that connects us to the schools and the lake, the landscape, the traffic flow, and the feel of our community. I should also mention there are two other Target stores within ten miles. 

The Lilly Pulitzer hullabaloo is merely a symptom of what’s wrong in America. People and corporations with money get what they want. The rich buy politicians. Their money makes them more money. The rest of us struggle. 

The rest of us don’t want what they have, really. We don’t want their things. We just want equality. We want our kids to have the same opportunities and education. 

Money, more than anything else, divides us.

And that’s the bottom line.

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Opening Day

“Just what is so great about baseball?” my thirteen-year-old son asked me on Opening Day.

Horrified that any offspring of mine could fail to love the game as much as I do, I scrambled for a response, but all I could come up with in the moment was, “Baseball is America and summer and everything that is good in life, and the only way to get through winter is by counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report.” 

He didn’t understand. He’s thirteen and he’s grown up in my house and he doesn’t understand, and this defies all logic.

I was raised just outside of Peoria, Illinois, halfway between Chicago and St. Louis. Peoria is divided territory. My dad was a Cardinals fan. If it was a Saturday afternoon in June, my dad had probably just finished mowing the lawn and he was falling asleep on the couch while Mike Shannon and Jack Buck called the strikes and balls on the radio. It was the soundtrack of summer.

We went out to eat at the Washington Family Restaurant in the days when children were expected to be seen, not heard, so I ate my pork tenderloin in silence and stared at the pictures on the wall of Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Joe Torre, Al Hrabosky, Keith Hernandez, Bob Forsch…. my childhood heroes.

The first time I heard the crack of a bat hitting a ball in the old Busch Stadium is etched indelibly in my memory. 

I drank my first Budweiser with my dad and my grandpa at Ray’s Patio Inn: a dark and cozy Cardinals’ establishment on the corner of Loucks and Hanssler Place. We watched the game on the 19-inch tv over the bar while slopping runny crock cheese on Ritz crackers. It was a rite of passage.

My little brother liked the Cubs. He liked the Cubs just to piss off my dad. Some of my friends liked the Cubs. They were still my friends despite our differences. Yes, we were loyal to different teams, but we were all loyal to baseball and we all agreed that the designated hitter is just plain wrong. 

I’m madly in love with a Cubs fan, believe it or not. 

World peace could be had, I believe, if the Cubs/Cardinals rivalry could be replicated in politics. 

But then there’s the American League. 

Oh well. It’s still baseball.