My favorite thrift find of 2025 was undoubtedly a vintage Lilly Pulitzer dress, a gift to my little sister for her homecoming dance. Two months later, I shared my thrifting success with Lilly Pulitzer's creative director, Mira Fain, before she hosted the label's Spring 2026 runway show.
"I'm a big thrifter myself, so I recognize a fellow thrifter," Fain told me under the Lilly-printed walls of the Casa Marina Resort in Key West, Florida. "That's what moves this brand forward. You saw [the dress] as 'oh my gosh, I have to have that for my little sister' and that's the legacy of [Lilly Pulitzer]."
Pulitzer's legacy is 65 years in the making. A New York native, she launched her namesake label in Palm Beach, Florida—a colorfully animated hotspot that helped shape her signature aesthetic—in 1959. Locals and tourists alike claimed her shift dresses and vibrant watercolor prints as the "foundation" of Florida fashion.
The Lilly Pulitzer way of dressing was groundbreaking for its time. "She did color when fashion was doing different sorts of beiges. She lived in Palm Beach all year when society expected her to be up north somewhere more structured," Fain said.
Now, Fain hopes to capture in her collections "what [Lilly] would've done" as creative director, while "constantly revitalizing" the brand, too. This season, Fain married of-the-moment silhouettes with archival prints straight from the Pulitzer archives. This grounds the "heritage" brand in today's trend cycle and opens it up to an entirely new generation—my 16-year-old sister included.
Lilly Pulitzer (left) in a shift dress in 1961; shoppers outside the Lilly Pulitzer Palm Beach store.
On November 19, the Lilly Pulitzer team traveled four hours south to Key West—the site where the titular Lilly frequently sourced her spirited prints back in the 1960s—for a beachfront, 84-look collection. It's the second show the brand has hosted after returning to the runway format last year, following a 20-year hiatus. The lineup showed the brand is thinking seriously about merging the past and the present. It opened with a recreation of one of Pulitzer's most famous photos, sending a shift-clad model running by the front row with her arms full of fabric bolts. Still, "No one tonight will confuse the show with a 1972 fashion show, said Michelle Kelly, CEO of Lilly Pulitzer. "This will be a 2026 show."
Pieces spanning suits, skirt sets, and shifts aplenty proved the brand hasn't lost its Floridian identity, even as it tweaks and refines its silhouettes to welcome a Next-Gen Lilly Girl. "It has to be revitalized without ever taking an eye off where we came from and the heritage," Fain said of twenty-first century Lilly Pulitzer. "I have the responsibility now to recognize younger generations and keep moving forward." The "heirloom of grandma" is important, but Fain doesn't want Lilly Pulitzer to "look like we belong to a museum."
See the Lilly lookalike running down the Spring 2026 runway.
One model walked the beachside runway in a gingham crop top, alongside a high-rise wrap skirt. A few looks later, a pinstripe swimsuit peeked out from underneath a tropical, '70s-coded blazer.
An especially "new" Lilly manifested in Look 19's midi skirt: another signature Lilly Pulitzer print was broken up into two-inch strips, each strand woven together like a basket. It's Fain's way of "reworking the archival prints and translating them onto modern fabrications."
A model styled swimwear with a Pulitzer-era blazer.
Gingham and a shift skirt felt especially Pulitzer-approved.
Feast your eyes on the rare criss-cross stitching atop the skirt.
Shift dresses are synonymous with Lilly Pulitzer, but the Spring 2026 collection only featured a handful. This choice allowed Fain to demonstrate the resort-wear's depth and how far it's grown since the 1970s, when the silhouette was its hero item.
"It all comes down to the customer, and how she moves along with us," Fain said. "If I veer off the boat in a design sense, not only [will] Michelle let me know, the customer and community lets me know." The fact is, not all shoppers can wear shifts on a regular basis. Blazers, blouses, and maxi skirts—still topped in archival Pulitzer prints—feel more versatile for new Lilly girls.
Lately, Fain has wanted to "push" Lilly Pulitzer fans to expand their image of what "a Lilly" is. See the shirtless skirt sets, bra tops, and mini dresses, which might've been considered un-Lilly-like thirty years ago, for proof. "If we just go back over and over and over again, everything becomes one and one becomes nothing," Fain adds.
The lace and fringe tassels could've been plucked straight out of the '70s.
So far, it seems that existing fans are on board. The front row at Wednesday's show was packed with fashion girls like stylists Michaela Erlanger and Tiffany Reid. As guests waited to see the new collection, they swapped stories of their "first Lilly." Chandler Guttersen, curator of Vintage Grace in NYC, wore a vintage Lilly Pulitzer from her own closet to take in the latest collection. "I grew up wearing the brand and am excited to see vintage-inspired prints and looks on the runway," she wrote on Instagram.
Whether they're a longtime client or a first-time thrift-shopper, "Everyone has a memory and also a hope for [Lilly Pulitzer's] future," Kelly said. The label's heritage is an asset—and an invitation to keep things fresh. It's a sentiment summed up in the show's final look: the first model channeling a 1960s Lilly took a second lap of the runway, walking hand-in-hand with Fain.
