The Palm Beach elite basked in the sunny styles of fashion icon Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau at an annual Archival Evening, benefiting the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, held at Club Colette. Each year, the eagerly anticipated dinner dance pays tribute to someone whose accomplishments have defined the history of the resort island. This year’s event: “Lilly Pulitzer: The Look of Love,” featured four decades of bright and splashy designs from this trend setter.

Pulitzer inadvertently became the designer-of-the-moment in the early 1960s, when she had her seamstress create a few boldly hued cotton shifts to wear while she sold orange juice at an outdoor stand on Worth Ave. The dresses were to be cool and comfortable enough to withstand the Florida heat and brightly colored to hide juice stains. The simple, casual frocks, born out of a desire for practicality, quickly became the must-have of Palm Beach’s society, the new symbol of tropical resort wear worn by “American nobility” such as Jackie O.

Admiring the “Pulitzer prizes”: fashion designer Steven Stolman, Cece Farris, Dame Celia Lipton Farris, Alyne Massey, Pauline Pitt, Thomas Quick, Mario Nievera, Kit and Bill Pannill, Town & Country’s Pamela Fiori, Kenn Karakul, Hope and Jack Annan, Mayor Lesly Smith, Danielle Hickox, Talbott and Jack Maxey, Frances Scaife, Liza Pulitzer, Minnie and Kevin McCluskey, Rosalind Clark, and John Mashek. Pulitzer’s styles have truly “shifted” the fashion sensibilities of Palm Beach.