New York based fashion designer Lily Clempson and Rayni Williams, co-founder of The Beverly Hills Estates, hosted a pop-up shopping event at Williams’ Beverly Hills home on March 7. Fifty percent of the proceeds went to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), providing aid to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children. Clothing racks set up in Williams’ backyard showcased Clempson’s line, LilyEve, which is known for its one-of-a-kind up-cycled silk and terry cloth jackets made from vintage Herme?s towels. The pop-up drew in dozens of people eager to shop for a cause, with sales resulting in a $10,000 donation to UNICEF the following day.
“Rayni is a family friend, who was one of my first customers on the up-cycled designer jackets and has been a massive supporter of the brand ever since,” Clempson told the Courier. “We had always had the event planned, but given the timing of the world events we decided to donate proceeds to UNICEF.”
Shortly after graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York City, Clempson launched LilyEve in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic from her parents’ house on Long Island. “My mom had four Herme?s beach towels in the attic,” Clempson told the Courier. “And one day I decided to just cut them up and make them into facemasks, not realizing the value of a Herme?s beach towel.”
Clempson repurposed the towels – with some sewing help from her mom – and began LilyEve by selling her unique and colorful face masks to raise money for FoodBankNY. “They started to just really take off, and we ended up raising $10,000 for food banks from these towels,” she said.
Shortly thereafter, Clempson teamed up with a former couture tailor at Bergdorf Goodman to help with production locally as demand increased. The duo expanded LilyEve to womenswear, launching jackets made from Herme?s terry cloth towels with whimsical prints and silk jackets using up-cycled vintage Herme?s and Chanel silk scarves. The limited edition luxury outerwear ranges from $1000 to $2000 and is available in boutiques like Fred Segal in West Hollywood, the Webster in Miami and more. LilyEve also sells bucket hats ($125) and terry cloth cabana trousers ($350) made using leftover “scraps” from their jackets. “The idea was how do we make a fully sustainable brand, and how do we kind of bring something to life with these different fabrics,” said Clempson.
Commitment to sustainability is one of the brand’s guiding principles. In lieu of tissue paper to wrap garments, all LilyEve items are wrapped in colorful printed vintage silk scarves.
“I started it by giving back to food banks; it’s nice to keep having some element of giving back to charity,” Clempson said. LilyEve will host another virtual shopping event at the end of April, with proceeds going to UNICEF again. To learn more, visit https://lilyeve.store/.
