23/06/2022
ICONS: Iris Apfel “More is more & less is a bore”
She advised nine USA presidents about interior designer, but her media power has little to do with her profession.
Iris Apfel combines in an hypnotic appeal designer pieces with imitation jewelry, second hand and non-western traditional accessories.
Pieces such as Lanvin, Chanel, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana or Nina Ricci’s mixed up with thrifts and antiques. Her unique style was noticed by MET, that offered a retrospective about her vast personal collection in 2005.
The fashion exhibition, the museum’s first focusing on a living person who wasn’t a designer, was a resounding success. This put her in the eye of internatonal publishers and designers. The 2014 Iris documentary by director Albert Maysles was the final push, imposing her, at 84 years old, as a fashion icon worldwide.
Always jovial and bright, Iris Apfel enjoys this unexpected media effervescence, that has led her to work with media, all kinds of brands, even lecturing at universities.
“Suddenly I have become a geriatric starlet. My husband and I laugh a lot with the situation. I have been doing this all my life and now I find lots of magazines, especially European, that are writing about me. But I am not doing anything other than what I have been doing for the past 70 years!”
Source: yolancris.com