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Fashion Designer Lilly Pulitzer Dies At Age 81

MIAMI (CBSNewYork/AP) - Fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer, known in part for starting her own line of tropical print dresses by accident, has died. She was 81.

Gale Schiffman of Quattlebaum Funeral and Cremation Services in West Palm Beach says Pulitzer died Sunday. She did not know her cause of death.

Pulitzer's tropical print dresses became a sensation in the 1960s and eventually became a fashion classic.

Pulitzer got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. The Palm Beach socialite had a husband who owned orange groves, and after she opened a juice stand in 1959, she asked her seamstress to make dresses in colorful prints that would camouflage fruit stains.

The dresses hung on a pipe behind her and soon outsold her juice.

By Sunday afternoon, the brand's website read "We Celebrate The Life Of Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau."

(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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