DE S IGN CENTRE
EVERYTHING GOES!
High priestess of maximalism and one of the world’s most recognisable tastemakers, Iris Apfel is a true original. Charlotte Abrahams celebrates an irrepressible spirit
“More is more and less is a bore” states the bio on Iris Apfel’s Instagram account (2.1 million followers and counting). The maxim is as true to her life as it is to her aesthetic. The interior designer turned fashion icon, or “geriatric starlet” as she puts it, with the over- sized glasses, wristfuls of bracelets and a penchant for a feathered jacket, may have “retired” nearly three decades ago, but wow, has she been filling her days. Since she and her extraordinary wardrobe became
the subject of an exhibition – Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection – at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005, Apfel has appeared in almost every fashion magazine in the world, been the subject of a documentary film, Iris, written a book, and created product lines ranging from make-up for cosmetics giant MAC to eyewear for Zenni Optical and, most recently, a range of textiles and trims for US fabric house Fabricut called, appropriately enough, Maximal Couture.
Born Iris Barrel in 1921 and raised on a farm in the
New York City borough of Queens, Apfel’s aesthetic was formed at an early age. “I was an only child,” she says, “so my parents often brought me to family events. Many of these were at my grandparents’ home and my grandmother would let me play with fabric scraps. She’d ask me to sit on the floor and put together the fabrics that I thought looked good together and, if I behaved, she allowed me to take six scraps home. I was obsessed with the textures, colours and patterns and spent many evenings entertaining myself with the fabrics.” Then as an adolescent, while her mother was busy
running a fashion boutique, Apfel taught herself to shop. Taking the subway into Manhattan, she foraged in thrift stores and junk shops all over the city and soon fell under the spell of a little basement store in Greenwich Village. It was in this Aladdin’s cave that she bought her first piece of jewellery. “I came in and he [the owner Mr D’Aras] had never seen a kid be so interested
in all this junk before,” she says in the documentary. “I just fixed on a brooch. I saved for weeks and bought it for the magnificent price of 65 cents. I was so thrilled, my God!” After university, the young Apfel was set on a career
as a fashion editor, but her first job, copy girl for the trade title Women’s Wear Daily, soon put paid to that dream. (She spent her days running up and down stairs delivering copy and earned almost nothing.) After a brief spell working as a location scout for the fashion illustrator Robert Goodman, Apfel found herself assisting an interior designer who specialised in turning co-operative flats in fancy Park Lane buildings into luxurious apartments. This being war time, the furnishings required an eye trained in thrift store chic. Apfel had found her calling. In 1947 she met Carl Apfel. They married the
following year and together began to travel the world in search of rare furniture and fabrics. Finding it
ABOVE: Iris Apfel’s distinctive personal style has evolved over the decades: her love of both travel and textiles led to the founding of her fabric company Old World Weavers, with her husband Carl. OPPOSITE: Having celebrated her 100th birthday last summer, Apfel is now one of the fashion world’s most feted names, and is loved for her witty, idiosyncratic – and age-defying – looks
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