Born in 1921 in the New York borough of Queens, she only experienced her breakthrough when she was already over 80: in 2005, the Costume Institute of the New York Metropolitan Museum had to cancel an exhibition at short notice and was urgently looking for a replacement. Curator Harold Koda spontaneously thought of Apfel – and she conjured up such an impressive display of success from her wardrobe and jewelry boxes that she became a star within a very short time.
“Old fashion star”
“It was a godsend, to be honest, because after I retired my social life was on the rocks,” Apfel once told the Guardian. “It’s wonderful that in my old age everyone is making such a fuss about me.” Even a documentary film was made, of course with the title “Iris”.
Iris Apfel died
Iris Apfel died at the age of 102. It wasn’t until the age of 84 that the New Yorker began a career as a fashion model and, as the oldest cover girl, was a role model for many women.
Apfel, who liked to describe herself as an “old fashion star,” already had an extremely successful career as an interior designer. Together with her husband Carl, whom she married in 1948, she worked as a designer team and advised, among others, nine US presidents on the furnishing of the White House.
“It was actually a pretty easy job because everything had to be as similar as humanly possible to what it already was,” Apfel once recalled. “Well, until Mrs. Kennedy came along. She hired a famous Parisian designer to make the house really French-chic, and the design community went crazy. After that we had to throw it all out and start again. But I liked Ms. Nixon. She was very nice.”
APA/AFP/Getty Images/Slaven Vlasic Iris and Carl Apfel were married for over 60 years
Married for over 60 years
The Apfel design team lived in New York and Florida and traveled around the world. There was no room for children. “I don’t like it when a child has to have a nanny, so that wasn’t an option for us. But having children is also like a rule, it’s expected of you. And I don’t like that either.”
Carl was married to Iris Apfel for more than 60 years until he died in 2015, shortly before his 101st birthday. The fashion diva then tried to distract herself with work – she posed as a model for advertising campaigns for several jewelry and clothing companies and designed jewelry for older people with integrated technology that checks their health and alerts an ambulance in an emergency. “Everything that was already on the market was terrible, and we needed nice things that people could wear to work or to a party.”
APA/AFP/Getty Images/Michael Loccisano Apfel was a welcome guest at fashion shows
People “who push buttons”
Apfel complained again and again that designers were forgetting older people. “Why these 15-year-old models? How is an older woman supposed to identify with that?”
Above all, Apfel enjoyed her late fame. “I think people like me because I’m different. I don’t think like everyone else. People are so busy with the worst aspects of technology these days. They spend their lives pushing buttons. And they don’t use their imagination anymore.”