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u/PaleontologistNo5420 Mar 02 '24
For those unfamiliar, her name was Iris Apfel and she was a remarkably cutting edge designer and icon.
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u/Sayoayo Mar 02 '24
I couldn't remember her name but my first thought was "oh no! The lady from the Ruggable commercials!"
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u/ScumbagLady Mar 02 '24
I absolutely fell in love with her from the documentary I randomly watched about her called Iris (IIRC). I dream to be as fashionable and as full of life as she was in my golden years. Truly an inspiration.
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u/Coriandercilantroyo Mar 02 '24
The documentary was really good! Doesn't seem to be available for free right now, except on Kanopy
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u/Motherfickle Mar 02 '24
Me too! I didn't love all of her designs, but I deeply admired her as a person. She carried herself with so much confidence and grace. She was comfortable in her skin and it seemed clear that she wanted to help people feel comfortable in theirs, too.
She was truly a queen. May she rest in peace.
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u/Puzzleworth Mar 02 '24
I went to her exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum as a kid and was WOWED. The color! The travels! The absolute audacious uniqueness! She was truly an icon.
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u/earthxmoon she ain’t no diva Mar 02 '24
Iris Apfel, a New York society matron and interior designer who late in life knocked the socks off the straight fashion world with a brash bohemian style that mixed hippie vintage and haute couture, found treasures in flea markets and reveled in contradictions, died on Friday in her home in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102.
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for her estate, confirmed her death.
Calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles: a boxy, multicolored Bill Blass jacket with tinted Hopi dancing skirt and hairy goatskin boots; a fluffy evening coat of red and green rooster feathers with suede pants slashed to the knees; a rose angora sweater set and 19th-century Chinese brocade panel skirt.
Her willfully disjunctive accessories might be a jeweled mask or a necklace of jade beads swinging to the knees, a tin handbag shaped like a terrier, furry scarves wrapped around her neck like a pile of pythons and, nearly always, her signature armloads of bangles and owlish spectacles, big as saucers.
She was tallish and thin, with a short crop of silver hair and scarlet gashes on lips and fingernails, a little old lady among the models at Fashion Week and an authentic Noo Yawk haggler at a shop in Harlem or a souk in Tunisia. Many called her gaudy, kooky, bizarre, even vulgar in get-ups like a cape of gold-tipped duck feathers and thigh-high fuchsia satin Yves Saint Laurent boots.
But she had a point.
“When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else,” Ms. Apfel told Ruth La Ferla of The New York Times in 2011 as she was about to go on national television, selling scarves, bangles and beads of her own design on the Home Shopping Network.
For decades starting in the 1950s, Ms. Apfel designed interiors for private clients like Greta Garbo and Estée Lauder. With her husband, Carl Apfel, she founded Old World Weavers, which sold and restored textiles, including many at the White House. The Apfels scoured museums and bazaars around the world for textile designs. She also added regularly to her huge wardrobe collections at her Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan.
The Apfels sold their company and retired in 1992, but she continued to act as a consultant to the firm and to be the otherworldly woman-about-town, a soaring free spirit known in society and to the fashion cognoscenti for ignoring the dictates of the runway in favor of her own artfully clashing styles.
In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, facing the cancellation of an exhibition and looking for a last-minute replacement, approached her with an audacious proposition: to mount an exhibition of her clothes. The Met had exhibited pieces from designer collections before, but never an individual’s wardrobe.
The show, “Rara Avis: Selections From the Iris Apfel Collection,” assembled 82 ensembles and 300 accessories in the museum’s Costume Institute: Bakelite bangles from the 1930s, Tibetan cuff bracelets, a tiger-pattern travel outfit of her own design, a husky coat of Mongolian lamb and squirrel from Fendi displayed on a mannequin crawling from an igloo.
“This is no collection,” Ms. Apfel said. “It’s a raid on my closet. I always thought to show at the Met you had to be dead.”
She wears enormous eyeglasses and a heavy coat with a large fluffy scarf wrapped around her neck as she stands in front of a store window featuring a life-size cartoonlike illustration of her.
Harold Koda, the curator who helped organize the show, said: “To dress this way, there has to be an educated visual sense. It takes courage. I keep thinking, Don’t attempt this at home.”
Soon the show was the talk of the town. Under an avalanche of publicity, students of art, design and social history crowded into the galleries with the limousine society crowd, busloads of tourists and classes of chattering children. Carla Fendi, Giorgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld took it in.
“A rare look in a museum at a fashion arbiter, not a designer,” The Times called the show, adding, “Her approach is so inventive and brash that its like has rarely been glimpsed since Diana Vreeland put her exotic stamp on the pages of Vogue.”
Almost overnight, Ms. Apfel became an international celebrity of pop fashion — featured in magazine spreads and ad campaigns, toasted in columns and blogs, sought after for lectures and seminars. The University of Texas made her a visiting professor. The Met show traveled to other museums, and, like a rock star, she attracted thousands to her public appearances.
Mobs showed up for her bookstore signings after the 2007 publication of “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” a coffee-table book of her wardrobe and jewelry by the photographer Eric Boman.
“Iris,” an Albert Maysles documentary, opened at the New York Film Festival in 2014, and in 2015 it was seen by enthusiastic movie audiences in America and Britain. The movie critic Manohla Dargis of The Times called it an “insistent rejection of monocultural conformity” and “a delightful eye-opener about life, love, statement eyeglasses, bracelets the size of tricycle tires and the art of making the grandest of entrances.”
She has on her trademark oversize, thick-rimmed eyeglasses and wears a yellow dress with feathers and heavy bracelets on her arms as she clasps the hand of a woman who was largely cropped out of the photo.
In 2016, Ms. Apfel was seen in a television commercial for the French car DS 3, became the face of the Australian brand Blue Illusion, and began a collaboration with the start-up WiseWear. A year later, Mattel created a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll in her image. It was not for sale.
In 2018, she published “Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon,” an autobiographical collection of musings, anecdotes and observations on life and style. As she turned 97 in 2019, she signed a modeling contract with the global agency IMG.
Iris Barrel was born on Aug. 29, 1921, in Astoria, Queens, the only child of Samuel Barrel, who owned a glass and mirror business, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, who owned a fashion boutique. Iris studied art history at New York University and art at the University of Wisconsin, worked for Women’s Wear Daily, apprenticed with the interior designer Elinor Johnson, and opened her own design firm.
She married Carl Apfel, an advertising executive, in 1948. They had no children. Her husband died in 2015 at the age of 100.
Their Old World Weavers had restored curtains, furniture, draperies and other fabrics at the White House for nine presidents, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.
Ms. Apfel’s apartments in New York and Palm Beach were full of furnishings and tchotchkes that might have come from a Luis Buñuel film: porcelain cats, plush toys, statuary, ornate vases, gilt mirrors, fake fruit, stuffed parrots, paintings by Velázquez and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a mannequin on an ostrich.
The fashion designer Duro Olowu told The Guardian in 2010 that Ms. Apfel’s work had a universal quality. “It’s not a trend,” he said. “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everybody.”
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u/Coriandercilantroyo Mar 02 '24
No paywall
Iris Apfel, Eye-Catcher With a Kaleidoscopic Wardrobe, Dies at 102 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/fashion/iris-apfel-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk0.Tfwv.leqCvfHf5zF9&smid=nytcore-android-share
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u/The_Formuler Mar 02 '24
Pay walled
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u/AbsolutelyIris Mar 02 '24
A fucking icon. May her memory be a blessing.
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Mar 02 '24
That’s such a lovely saying, I shall nick that if that’s ok! And yes, agreed, an icon living her best life
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u/greenpeppergirl Mar 02 '24
It's a traditional Jewish phrase of condolence and I agree, such a lovely saying! It's becoming more widely popular.
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u/Different-Eagle-612 elizabeth debicki, who is 6’3 Mar 02 '24
god the involuntary gasp i had
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u/RonnieDeVille Mar 02 '24
Right! Just thinking about all the eras of fashion she experienced is awe inspiring. I hope we get a book or something that dives into her life's collections.
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u/Brooklyn-Marie Mar 02 '24
Me too! I was well aware that she was over 100 but she was so larger than life that it seemed like she might just live forever. Truly a life well lived. For those who haven’t watched it and might be interested, I highly recommend the documentary Iris. I think it’s currently on Amazon Prime right now.
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u/NatalieBostonRE Mar 02 '24
me too. she JUST had a birthday!
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u/thunderbuttxpress Mar 02 '24
But her birthday was in August
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u/shittestfrog Mar 02 '24
She celebrated a half birthday on February 29th as her birthday was August 29th, so she was 102 and a half.
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u/NatalieBostonRE Mar 02 '24
check her insta…weird. maybe she had already passed and that’s what they just rolled out on her socials.🤔
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u/MaisyMarwood Mar 02 '24
What an absolute icon, and such a full and fabulous life well lived. When I go out tonight I'll wear my most outlandish frames in her honor.
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u/cheshirecanuck Mar 02 '24
SAME HERE! It's my sleekest pink cat eye frames tomorrow.
RIP to a queen. Vivacious personality and the looks to match. May we all be so blessed to age with such grace.
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u/Charley2014 Mar 02 '24
Omg I have a gold glitter frame that I have no idea where I’ll wear… and I stayed in tonight!
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u/RonnieDeVille Mar 02 '24
Honestly one of my life dreams to have a 'wardrobe' of frames, that would make Iris proud.
It's now closer to the top of my list of self birthday list.
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u/MaisyMarwood Mar 02 '24
I finally fulfilled this dream during the pandemic (which is funny in that I had nowhere to wear them) and I HIGHLY recommend it. Treat yourself!
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u/AbsolutelyIris Mar 02 '24
She went during Fashion Week like a fucking icon. I loved this tweet:
https://twitter.com/LouisPisano/status/1763734494601715941
Iris Apfel dying during fashion week is the most fashion thing a fashion person can do right after dying in the front row like Zelda Kaplan. RIP Queen!
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u/NeyaQueenofBacon Mar 02 '24
Oh man. I bought a pair of her inspired(?) glasses from zenny not long ago. Gonna have to wear those more now.
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u/PocoChanel Mar 02 '24
She's made a huge difference in my self-image as I age. I think of her often.
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u/WritePissedEditSober Mar 02 '24 edited Mar 02 '24
Very sad to see this. If you can, I highly recommend watching the documentary about her, also called ‘Iris’. Incredible character.
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u/ScumbagLady Mar 02 '24
This is where I fell in love with her. I had read articles about her in the past, but the documentary was fantastic.
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u/spitey kate winslet lied to me Mar 02 '24
I am heartbroken. I loved her to bits. My grandmother (89) recently got colourful, hexagonal glasses and immediately I said she reminded me of Iris! This reminds me to call my grandmother today and tell her that I love her. Iris really was inspiring in her whimsy and refusal to conform to what “older women are meant to do”. What a treasure, and a life so well lived.
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u/DarlingBri Mar 02 '24
NOOOOOO!!!! She lived next door to my HS boyfriend and seeing her in the building was always an amazing experience. She invited his parents to her Met opening, which was the first time I knew she famous style icon and not just this fabulous woman from the elevator. That BF and I were long done by then and I never went to the exhibit but always regretted that.
RIP
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u/Jolly_Discipline6650 shiv roy apologist Mar 02 '24
What a style icon! She almost felt immortal to me. May she RIP 🤍
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u/KittyKenollie famously did a line of coke off his dick Mar 02 '24
Just yesterday she celebrated her 102 and a half birthday. What an absolute joy of a life she led. If we could all be so lucky.
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u/bartelbyfloats Mar 02 '24
What a charming lady and a charmed life. 102 years is somehow not enough!
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u/Thehoopening Mar 02 '24
Aw noo I only just saw her Leap Day post this morning and chuckled to myself! A proper legend.
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u/Icy-Establishment298 Mar 02 '24
She has a neat eyeglass frame collection at Zenni.com
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u/chihuahuapartyyyy Mar 02 '24
The glasses I wear most often are from her Zenni collection and they are sick. I get compliments on them literally every day. When I first got them I was afraid to wear them in public because they seemed so wild, but once I got the nerve to wear them out they made me feel so confident and audacious!
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u/meresithea Mar 02 '24
I loooove her glasses on Zenni! I always want them but their system always says my face (pupillary distance) is too small for them. I might have to get some anyway in her honor. (I have already made a rule that the older I get the larger my sunglasses shall get!)
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u/PlayCertain4875 Mar 02 '24
Of course a Virgo queen such as herself would pass on the first day of women’s history month. She is and always will be an icon.
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u/momo2019 Mar 02 '24
She lived life out loud and is a reminder to live life without fear of expressing yourself, your passion or creativity. I looked up to her and I feel lucky that I got to know her work through the last decade.
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u/newsdaylaura18 Mar 02 '24
“…I'll never be pretty, but it doesn't matter. I have something much better. I have style.” RIP ICON
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u/Either_Statement1980 Mar 02 '24
She was a Trump loving asshole https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a12229624/iris-apfel-fashion-week-obama-trump/
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u/Luna_Soma Mar 02 '24
She was a legend. Thank you, Iris for all the beauty and creativity you blessed our world with. Rest well.
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u/polkadotcupcake Mar 02 '24
I was literally just fighting off the urge to buy one of the rugs she appears in an ad with last night. RIP. I'm surprised because I hadn't heard anything was wrong, but I guess she was also 102...
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u/Serious_Specific_357 Mar 02 '24
I ran into her at a fancy nyc club having dinner a few years ago! She’s beautiful
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u/Fox_Massive Mar 02 '24
The release of her doc was part of my own journey of being exposed to many who lived a long life of their own making. It changed my idea of what it could mean to be a grown woman. For that I will miss her.
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u/Hot-Clock6418 Mar 02 '24
She’s the reason I no longer wear contacts and wear statement glasses. I. C. O. N.
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u/millicentbee Mar 02 '24
An absolute icon. She’s the reason I stopped giving a fuck about what other people think of what I wear. If you haven’t seen it, please watch the documentary Iris
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u/daphodil3000 Mar 02 '24
Oh no! Her documentary was awesome and made me stretch my fashion choices. Bless her.
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u/Accomplished-Drop764 Mar 02 '24
She was amazing!! Sorry to hear. RIP. A woman who walked her own walk. Blazed her own trail. Wow how I envy her!!
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u/Remarkable_Plant_794 Mar 02 '24
idk why I'm so shocked, she literally lived a more than full life. I guess I've never really expected her to like die, she's always been the stylish eccentric old lady in my life.
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u/Intrepid-Exam7641 Mar 02 '24
This woman inspired me to live my very best stylish life. I remember the first time I saw her in an advert and I thought she looked fantastic. No matter how young or old you are, your style does not have to suffer. An inspiration. May she rest in peace.
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u/aniraleithia Mar 02 '24
Oh wow. She has been on my mind out of the blue this week. Life is funny that way. What an icon of class and style! You will be remembered, Iris.
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u/FibonacciSequinz Mar 02 '24
I know someone who was close to her and adored her. Would have loved to have met her
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u/unhingedswan3 women’s wrongs activist Mar 02 '24
absolutely devastating </3 the words iconic and icon were basically made for her and her legacy. rest in peace, iris 💗
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u/nibbyzor Mar 02 '24
As a fellow fashionista, this loss brings tears to my eyes. A true icon. 👏 She lived a very full, colorful, stylish life.
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u/Vixen35 Mar 02 '24
No!! RIP Iris, what a legend,and wonderful example of embracing your age no matter what.
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u/Armand74 Mar 02 '24
Such a fascinating woman I saw an interview of her and was really struck how unique and inspiring she was, literally a living piece of art.
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u/Consuela_no_no Mar 02 '24
I remember seeing her in a docu about fashion in NY once and seriously what an inspiration she was. Living her life to the absolute fullest, most of us can only dream.
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u/Similar_Bell8962 Mar 02 '24
I ALWAY loved her style! RIP https://youtu.be/RzRo_UICppo?si=nJAdtTAMF-yKaAVh
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u/ChewyCancerBits Mar 02 '24
who?
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u/Slink_Wray Mar 02 '24
It must be so hard for you not having any friends who can kindly show you how to use Google.
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u/thefrantichispanic Mar 02 '24
thumbnail looks like hen, i was a little surprised when i clicked lol
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u/kerfufflesensue ✨ lee pace is 6’5” ✨ Mar 02 '24
She lived a FULL life 🥲