On Course with LemonRose Golf
For former television personality Jillian Mele and one of her best friends (and business partner), Kristen Casey, taking risks and making pivots in their respective professional lives has led them to a place neither thought they’d exactly find themselves when they first met on the campus of LaSalle University in Northwest Philly nearly 25 years ago.
Later this month, this very dynamic duo will debut their golf apparel brand, LemonRose Golf. And they’re not just whipping out some drawings, designs, or swatches of fabric to post on social media for their friends and followers to glimpse and reply with messages of congratulations or applause emojis.
Mele and Casey are going right into the belly of the beast. They’ll be debuting their clothing line at the world’s largest global gathering of the golf industry, the 2026 PGA Show, Jan. 20–23, in Orlando, FL. It’s a massive annual trade show where thousands of professionals from the golf industry gather to network, learn business strategies, check out the latest equipment, tech gear, accessories and, of course, apparel.
This fashion quest has been years in the making. Mele would complain to Casey about the clothes she’d wear on TV and suggested they come up with designs for dresses and, later, blazers. Those ideas never materialized.
Casey, who in one of her career pivots earned a master’s degree in Global Fashion from Jefferson University (formerly Philadelphia University) in 2015, had keen insight into the industry from her grad schoolwork and traveling to study in Italy and China. Eventually, they found common ground on the fairways and greens of the golf course. Each woman has played golf and truly enjoyed it. What they didn’t like was what they called the “shrink-it-and-pink-it” approach to women’s apparel — basically taking men’s golf apparel, shrinking the sizes down and making it pink — and agreed they could do much better.
“I just felt there was a big gap in the marketplace for women’s golf apparel and I felt like it was underserved,” said Mele, who got her start in television as an intern at then-Comcast SportsNet in Philly and last appeared on the airwaves as an anchor and reporter for 6abc’s Action News in early 2023. “We can’t wait to let people know who we are and learn who they are. That’s going to be a big part of our brand… We’re starting this from scratch, and we put our blood, sweat and tears in this for a reason because we feel like it’s important and because it’s needed. We want women to feel like someone gets them and someone is building this with and for them.”
“I’m so excited to get to Orlando and get to the PGA Show,” said Casey, who worked in advertising after graduating from LaSalle in 2005. “This falls under the category of things I never thought I’d be doing. But I’m so proud and excited to be doing it. Having that moment where we can have our booth designed exactly how we want it. Like our apparel, it’s super personal. Every detail has meaning to us and our booth will emulate that just as much as the clothing does. But to be able to have that first meeting, and that first conversation, I just have chills thinking about it.”
Growing the game for women
As part of their brand building and grassroots marketing, the LemonRose ladies held a golf and networking outing for female golfers — Intentional Impact — at Merchantville Country Club, a private facility in Cherry Hill, NJ, back in October. For Mele and Casey, the risk was whether anyone would actually come.
“There was this fear, ‘What if four people show up, what are we going to do?’” said Casey, a 2001 graduate of Wall Township High School in Monmouth County, NJ. “Then, the registrations started rolling in and within two or three days, we were selling out. That was the most incredible feeling.”
They wound up not only selling out but adding some extra spots when a few women walked up to participate. They had 45 golfers on the nine-hole South Jersey course.
“As a female, I don’t hit it that far,” Mele said of her own golf game. “I’m hitting extra shots every hole and I put extra pressure on myself. And I know a lot of women do it too, where we feel rushed or anxious. We don’t want to hold anyone up so we put this pressure on ourselves and that makes it not as enjoyable. Part of what LemonRose Golf is trying to do is say to women and girls, ‘It’s OK… you’re at a place where you belong. If you want to take your time, take your time. You want to use our clubs, use our clubs. If you’ve never picked up a golf club before and still want to try it, we‘ll stand right next to you and we’ll help you.’”
Following the outing, Casey experienced a moment of pride. While shopping for a putter at a golf specialty store in the region, she was recognized by a woman who was at their Merchantville event.
“A woman came up to me and said, ‘I was at your outing in October, and I can’t wait for the next one. I want to be at everything you girls do.’ I was shocked and I was caught off guard,” Casey said. “She was just looking at clubs and when I walked in, she was telling the salesman in the store that she met us at our outing, we’re creating a line of women’s golf apparel, and he should carry it in the store. That’s the biggest compliment we could have ever received.”
It’s no secret that women’s sports are booming right now. Golf is no exception. Mele cited a quote from Mike Whan, the CEO of the United States Golf Association in which he said, “If women’s golf was a stock, you’d buy it because it’s what’s driving our game forward.” In 2024, according to the National Golf Foundation, a record 28 percent of all on-course golfers were women and the total number of women golfers increased to nearly eight million, marking the fifth straight year that total has increased.
Pivot points
Before going all in on their golf apparel business, Mele and Casey had other careers, but while in those other professions, they always came back to discussions about fashion. And they both found pivot points to lead them to the partnership they’ve always envisioned.
Mele said she was told she was “crazy” to give up the television career that saw her on the air from 2001 at her first job in northern Maine to stops in Binghamton, NY, NBC10 and CSN in Philly, Fox News network in New York City, and then back to Philly (6ABC). Before jumping out of the media completely in 2023, she began the pursuit of her MBA part-time at LaSalle in 2021, eventually graduating in 2024.
“For a few years, leading up to when I left the media, I just had this unsettled feeling inside, like something wasn’t right. I wasn’t where I was supposed to be,” said Mele, who graduated in 2001 from Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School in Gwynedd Valley, PA. “Eventually, it became so much that I’d wake up in the middle of the night having anxiety and panic attacks. I couldn’t figure out why. I started to journal and write a lot down and I started to listen to myself. Eventually, the discomfort got so loud I couldn’t ignore it.”
Meanwhile, a few separate factors — pursuit of grad school full-time, the birth of her daughter, and the COVID-19 pandemic — caused Casey to re-think her line of work on a couple of occasions. She had originally worked in advertising and after graduating from LaSalle in 2005, left that role and got her aforementioned masters, which led to her get a job as a personal stylist with the Anthropologie brand, a part of Urban Outfitters.
“I took some time off to start our family and had my daughter,” Casey said. “Then I was starting my own business and had just gone through all of the steps. I had this dream of creating my own personal styling company for several years and then COVID hit and there was one thing no one did for a few years, and that was get dressed for the day. It was not what I intended, but I had to pivot.”
Then in September 2024, Mele was again lamenting about clothing, this time the limited apparel she could (or couldn’t) find in stores and the two friends had their voila moment. They’d design golf clothing for women. From that point on, it’s been full-speed ahead for these two creative, driven friends.
Casey explained: “A little over a year ago, Jillian said, ‘I think I have it. What about women’s golf?’ And that was it! We’re absolutely going to start creating something together. We started sketching that night, and we never looked back.”
On course
Both Mele and Casey grew up playing sports, but they each sort of forced their way into the game of golf, taking up the game with male family members.
In March 2015, while on a week-long vacation with extended family in Aruba, Mele said the men had planned on golfing a few times during the trip. “There was this one day where I just said, ‘You know what, I want to play. I’m gonna be the only woman, but I’m going to play.’ I wanted to see what it was all about.” She was hooked and her favorite playing partner is her dad, Tom.
Casey started in the game a bit earlier, right after high school. She had a cousin and an uncle who played. “I’d beg my cousin just to ‘take me to the driving range, take me somewhere.’ I would tell him, ‘You’re good at the game and I just want to learn,’ because I felt it was a sport that I could continue to participate in for many years.”
Now they’ve taken their love of golf, their various areas of expertise (business, fashion, media, advertising) and combined it all to create LemonRose Golf. They want to be in it for the long haul, creating not just clothing, but a place for women to both dress the part and find their way in the sport.
“We want to be so much more than an apparel brand,” Mele said. “I look at us as a way to build confidence in women who want to play golf, whether they’ve picked up a golf club or not.”
And Mele and Casey will make sure those women look good doing so.
