The Beach Party, The Conservative Party and The Party Dress

In the last three days three woman of my life in the seventies passed away and I can only imagine there is one big party in heaven.  Goodbye to Lilly Pulitzer, Margaret Thatcher and Annette Funicello.  I would love to hear their conversation as they are waiting in line to get in.  They all liked a party of one kind or another.

Living in the world of real time TV and only five channels I used to watch reruns of the Mickey Mouse club with Annette Funicello everyday afterschool.  I loved to sing along, “M I C, see you real soon, K E Y, Why because we like you, M O U S E.”  Well I like you too Annette.  She was tween I could relate to, one who developed early, but still liked to do kid stuff.  Then I discovered all her teenage beach movies and I wondered where all the cute boys dancing on the beach were.

Then I went to boarding school and was ensconced in the prepster world that was big on all things Lilly.  Pink, yellow and green were the colors of the preppy flag.  We had a real Lilly store in Pawley’s Island and back in the days when Lilly still ran the business you could buy the brightly colored tropical cotton fabric by the yard.  It was none to bright of Ms. Pulitzer to sell her signature cloth for only about $5 a yard when a $100 dress made out of the same pattern only took about a yard and a half.  Being a seamstress out of necessity I was able to whip myself up many Lilly jumpers and shifts for a fraction of the price of a premade dress.

When I graduated from boarding school my conservative parents moved to London just as leader of the Conservative Party Margaret Thatcher was moving into 10 Downing Street to make Britain great again.  In our house Maggie could do no wrong as she deregulated what she could and stared down the Labour movement.  She and Ronald Reagan seemed to be what the times needed, although now with hindsight perhaps a little more watchdog might have kept us from the financial meltdown of 2008.

Somehow the passing of three iconic women makes me feel a little older.  When the people from your impressionable years are no longer around, whether you actually knew them or not, it changes your world.  They say things happen in threes so hopefully this is it for a little while.  I can only feel so much older all at once.