3 min read
It was the middle of the pandemic, and Lily Clempson was in the Hamptons at her parents’ house. The recent Parsons grad was suddenly struck with an idea: Why not take Grandma’s old Hermès beach towels and cut them up into face masks and sell them to raise funds for FoodBank NYC? “I made very, very hot face masks that you couldn’t breathe out of, but they just looked the part,” she said with a laugh. She sold them online through her Instagram and dropped them off to customers locally, and then came the requests for custom pieces all spun out of vintage Hermès. “I would honestly just say yes to everything,” she tells us. “I’m actually a very bad sewer, but I was just like, ‘Yes, yeah, I’ll do it.’” And so, the LilyEve brand was born.
LilyEve and her upcycled jacket.
Today, LilyEve sells blanket coats, cropped trench coats, shearling vests, silk tops, oversize tote bags, and bucket hats, all exclusively upcycled from vintage Hermès blankets, scarves, and beach towels. Some pieces are more colorful than others, like a raspberry- and tangerine-hued jacket or the shearling vest series, which is inherently maximalist with its psychedelic prints culled from some of the French label’s most extravagant scarves. Other pieces are more demure, but still packed full of personality, like a blue-and-white blanket trench coat that Kelly Rutherford recently wore. The “Terry Towel Series” pieces—cropped jackets rendered from vintage towels—are covered in gloriously stylized seagulls, parrots, and cheetahs. Above all else, each LilyEve garment is one of a kind.
In the early days of her brand, Clempson was searching for the perfect production partner and came across Michel, a then-89-year-old who previously designed for Jacques Fath and did the Broadway costumes for shows like Funny Girl before running his East Hampton womenswear boutique for 32 years. He was recommended to her by one of her favorite locals at Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett. He has sadly now passed away, but Clempson has honored him by re-creating his original studio in Brooklyn.
Clempson sources each and every vintage Hermès piece herself, and it’s become one of the most exciting parts of growing her brand. “I’m chronically online, so that obviously helps,” she says. She often stalks The RealReal and auctions for the best gems. Lifelong collectors now also come to her to offer up some of their rarest pieces, and she also repurposes scraps from her own work. “Seeing those little pieces and trying to think of what other product could come out of that, whether it’s tiny pieces of toweling or silk left from the scarves, that’s always a really fun inspiration,” she adds.
Up next, LilyEve is developing further categories, like an evening clutch bag made from Hermès ties. “We’re trying to see if we can have some sort of weaving element to the bag and then have each one be kind of color-coded based on the tie bundles I can source,” she says. “I don’t want to be everywhere or kind of overproduce.” Everything is released in limited batches and is truly one of a kind: a testament to luxury slow fashion in the fast-paced digital age.