Iris Apfel, interior designer and fashion icon, 1921 — 2024

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

If Iris Apfel was seen as kitsch, eccentric or even peculiar, that was fine by her. “More is more and less is a bore” was the motto that the self-proclaimed “geriatric starlet” famously lived by.

Instantly recognisable by her signature oversized round glasses, bright lipstick and abundance of accessories — her trademark look was even turned into a Barbie — Apfel became an unlikely fashion personality in her eighties after the Metropolitan Museum of Art put on a hit exhibition featuring pieces from her eclectic wardrobe.

Apfel, who has died aged 102, was born as Iris Barrel in Queens, New York, in 1921. Her father owned a glass and mirror shop and her Russian-born mother ran a boutique selling fashion and accessories. An only child, the young Apfel shared her mother’s love of fashion and clothing. But when the Great Depression hit, she had to learn how to sew and create clothes on a budget. 

Apfel studied art history at New York University before attending the University of Wisconsin’s fine arts school, graduating in 1943. She got her professional start at fashion industry trade journal Women’s Wear Daily, where she was initially a copywriter, but later switched to covering textiles.

Along the way, the budding fashionista married Carl Apfel, who she met while vacationing in Upstate New York. Together, they founded a textile manufacturing company, Old World Weavers. To gain inspiration for their work, the couple travelled the world together until Carl died in 2015, aged 100. 

The Apfels had private clients, such as Greta Garbo and Estée Lauder, for whom they offered interior design services. Iris also worked on various design restoration projects across curtains, furniture, draperies and other fabrics for nine US presidents and their spouses, including Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. 

After the pair sold their company and retired in 1992, Apfel continued to act as a consultant for the business while enjoying life as a woman about town. The Met’s 2005 exhibition, featuring 82 ensembles and 300 accessories from Apfel’s wardrobe over the decades, put her on the fashion map, as it marked the first time that the museum had staged an exhibition dedicated to an individual’s wardrobe. The show, which was attended by the likes of Giorgio Armani and the late Karl Lagerfeld, later travelled to other museums. Her fame was further propelled by a 2014 documentary titled Iris, from celebrated filmmaker Albert Maysles, which explored the fashion icon’s life and creativity. 

She was aged 97 when she signed a modelling contract with global agency IMG Models, who also represent the likes of Gigi Hadid, Ashley Graham and Karlie Kloss. During the last decade of her life, she landed campaigns with companies including Kate Spade, Magnum and eBay and worked on limited-edition collaborations with the likes of H&M and Mac Cosmetics.

She also regularly featured in the style pages of The New York Times, and continued to share her outfits — and sense of humour — on her personal Instagram, where she had a 3.1mn-strong following. Even as her fan club, grew, she continued to ignore trends dictated by the runway and embraced her own vibrant, clashing style. “When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else,” Apfel told the New York Times in 2011. 

The “accidental icon” — the title of her 2018 autobiography, which contains musings, anecdotes and observations on life and style — was never short on curiosity and bonhomie.

At 101, she landed her first beauty campaign when she collaborated with Ciaté London on a make-up line, lending a fresh and original perspective to the ageing process, which few stars have willingly embraced.

“Just because you get to a certain number doesn’t mean you have to roll up into a ball and wait for the grim reaper,” she told British youth culture magazine Dazed in 2012.

Apfel being herself was her fundamental appeal — it was this quality that endeared her to admirers, including today’s Gen Zs and Alpha, who prioritise individuality and self-expression. Her final personal post on Instagram, shared a week before her death, showed her sitting in front of silver foil streamers and beaming for the camera as she joked in the caption that she was “only 26” in Leap Years.

The centenarian trendsetter’s individual, striking taste is exactly what made her such a force: in an industry long dominated by trends, conformity and a desire for validation, there’s nothing more powerful than being yourself.