Adolph Schuman

Who is Adolph Schuman?

Adolph P. Schuman was a prominent San Francisco businessman. He is the founder and president of the Lilli Ann apparel company, and a longtime Democratic Party campaign contributor who had close ties to John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

Schuman's father, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who came to America in the 1880s, was driving a milk truck in San Francisco when the son started a wholesale women's clothing company in 1933 in two rented rooms with an $800 loan. In 1982, Lilli Ann reported retail sales of $40 million.

After World War II, Schuman opened a Lilli Ann show room in Paris, and promoted his line by organizing a “San Francisco to Paris Fashion Show”, with lavish runway productions in both cities which brought him into personal contact with such leading Paris fashion designers as Coco Chanel and Cristóbal Balenciaga. At the same time, Schuman's purchase of huge quantities of European fabrics helped revitalize the war-ravaged French and Italian textile industries in the early 1950s.