American business women, textile expert, interior designer and fashion personality Iris Apfel has passed away. She was 102 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her commercial agent Lori Sale, who called Apple “extraordinary”. No cause of death was given. It was also announced on her verified Instagram page on Friday. Which had celebrated a day earlier that Leap Day represented her 102nd and a half birthday.
Born on August 29, 1921, Apple was known for her extravagant, flamboyant dresses, gowns, and large costume jewelry. For example, a classic Apfel look would pair a feather boa with a jacket adorned with feather garland, bangles and Native American beadwork.
With her large, round, black-rimmed glasses, bright red lipstick and short white hair, she stood out at every fashion show she attended.
Her style was the subject of museum exhibits and a documentary film, “Iris,” directed by Albert Maisel.”I’m not pretty, and I’ll never be pretty, but that doesn’t matter,” she once said. “I have something much better. I have style.”
Apfel enjoyed late-in-life fame on social media, amassing nearly 3 million followers on Instagram, where her profile proclaims: “More is more and less is a bore.”
On TikTok, she has attracted 215,000 followers as she updates fashion and style and promotes recent collaborations.
“Being stylish and being fashionable are two completely different things,” she said in a TikTok video. You can easily shop your way to being fashionable. Style, I think is in your DNA. It means originality and courage.
She has never retired, telling “Today”: “I think retirement at any age is a fate worse than death. Just because you get a number doesn’t mean you have to stop.”
“Working with her was the honor of a lifetime. I will miss her daily calls, always greeted with the familiar question: “What have you got for me today? ” “Evidence of her indomitable will to work. She was a visionary in every sense of the word. She saw the world through a unique lens—a giant, distinctive pair of glasses that sat atop her nose.
Iris Apfel was an expert in textiles and antique clothing. She and her husband Carl owned a textile manufacturing company, Old World Weavers, and specialized in restoration work, including projects at the White House under six different US presidents. Apfel’s famous clients included Estee Lauder and Greta Garbo.
Apfel’s fame soared in 2005 when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City hosted a show about her called “Rara Avis,” Latin for “rare bird.” The museum described her style as “both humorous and passionately idiosyncratic.
Her originality is usually reflected in her mix of high and low fashion—Dior haute couture with flea market finds, 19th-century ecclesiastical dresses with Dolce & Gabbana lizard trousers. The museum said his “layered compositions” defied “aesthetic conventions” and represented a “boldly graphic modernism” “even at their most extreme and baroque”.
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, was one of several museums around the country that hosted a traveling version of the show.
Apfel later decided to donate hundreds of pieces to Peabody – including couture gowns – to help build what she described as “a spectacular fashion collection”.
A fashion and lifestyle museum near Apfel’s winter home in Palm Beach, Florida, also plans a gallery to display items from Apfel’s collection.
Iris Apfel was born in New York City to Samuel and Sadie Burrell. Her mother owned a boutique.
Apple’s fame in his later years included appearing in advertisements for brands such as M.A.C. Cosmetics and Kate Spade. She also designed a line of accessories and jewelry for the home shopping network, collaborating with H&M on a collection of brightly colored clothing, jewelry and shoes that sell out in minutes, a makeover with Ciate London. Lined, which includes a collection of lenses. Partnered with Zenni and Ruggable on floor coverings.
In a 2017 interview with the AP, aged 95, she said her favorite contemporary designers included Ralph Rucci, Isabel Toledo and Naeem Khan, but added: “I have a lot, I look for It doesn’t.” Asked for her fashion advice, she said: “Everyone should find their own way. I’m very good at individuality. I don’t like trends. If you find out that you Who you are and what you look like and what you can do. Handle, you’ll know what to do.”
She called himself an “accidental icon”, which became the title of a book he published in 2018 filled with memories of her and her musical style. Odes to Apfel abound, from a Barbie to t-shirts, glasses, artwork and dolls.