Lilly Pulitzer Tennis Tote Bag
About Palm Springs
This desert city sits in the Coachella Valley at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains, on land long associated with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. It grew from a health retreat and winter resort into a mid-century municipality, with its airport and nearby wind farms tying it to the desert east of Los Angeles.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
A printed tennis tote from Lilly Pulitzer, and the print is the product.
The house’s prints began as a practical solution to a laundry problem — a pattern loud enough that citrus stains could not be found in it — and six decades later they are still hand-painted in a studio rather than generated, which is why the palette reads as one continuous family rather than as a series of seasons.
A tote is the simplest bag format there is, and that simplicity is the design. It is an open-topped carrier with handles cut to clear the shoulder, so it is loaded and unloaded without unzipping anything and without laying it flat.
Against a racquet bag it gives up compartments, padding and a dedicated frame sleeve; what it gives back is that everything inside is reachable in one motion, which is the reason a tote is the bag most players actually carry to a court they know.
Palm Springs is a desert city where courts sit in direct sun and equipment spends its time on hot open ground rather than in a clubhouse, so a bag is a working item there rather than a decorative one.
Specifications
| Type | Tennis tote bag |
|---|---|
| Format | Open top, twin handles |
| Design | Lilly Pulitzer print |
| Brand | Lilly Pulitzer |
Lilly Pulitzer prints are the identifying feature of everything the house makes, and a tote is the largest flat surface it produces — which is why the bags carry the boldest versions of the patterns rather than the quietest.
LET Lilly Pulitzer Tennis Tote Bag SHOW YOU Palm Springs
Bag: Lean in—those rotating tram cars have been carrying everyone’s business up Chino Canyon to a station at 8,516 feet, and this tote is pretending it just came for the altitude.
Bag: Word on North Palm Canyon Drive is that Albert Frey put a cantilevered wedge of a canopy on the Tramway Gas Station, and naturally this tote arrived acting like the architecture had been flirting first.
Bag: The Palm Springs Art Museum’s 1976 E. Stewart Williams block is holding around 24,000 objects, which is exactly the kind of inventory count that starts family drama at brunch.
Bag: At Moorten Botanical Garden, one acre and about three thousand desert plants surround the glasshouse Cactarium, and believe me, the succulents have been quietly judging everyone’s water habits for years.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.