Style Never Gets Old — The Iconic Iris Apfel

“I’m a geri­atric star­let, my dear, don’t you know,” – Iris Apfel.

For those of you that didn’t know, 90 is the new black. With chic, edgy fash­ion blogs like Advanced Style show­ing us older New Yorkers rock­ing killer style, the kind of per­sonal style that most of us are not even capa­ble of embody­ing at this stage in our lives, some of us wannabe fash­ion mavens in the younger set (under 90) are feel­ing a bit left in the dust.

Iris Apfel, one of today’s most cur­rent and unex­pected style icons is quite the talk of the town. After the suc­cess of her 2005 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhi­bi­tion dis­play­ing her vast, eclec­tic col­lec­tion of cloth­ing and acces­sories, Rara Avis (Rare Bird): The Irreverent Iris Apfel, the self pro­claimed geri­atric starlet’s image and pres­ence has been in high demand.

Since the Met exhibit, Iris has mod­eled for the 2008 Coach ad cam­paign, designed a line of jew­elry for HSN and for the über-hip Yoox.com, launched a makeup col­lec­tion for MAC cos­met­ics, and has been filmed for a doc­u­men­tary by film­maker Albert Maysles of the critically-acclaimed Grey Gardens.

In addi­tion to those feats, the very busy trendsetter’s pres­ence has been requested as guest of honor for numer­ous high­brow fash­ion events in the last year. And although she is retired from her for­mer 9:00–5:00 of co-owning the renowned Old World Weavers tex­tile firm with her hus­band, she is still con­stantly on the move, con­sult­ing and lec­tur­ing across the coun­try on fash­ion and related top­ics. We would need a gin­seng smoothie and some caf­feine pills to keep up with this woman.

Apfel has the kind of per­sonal style that will stop peo­ple in the street. She says that her mother “wor­shipped at the altar of the acces­sory” and thus she “got the bug.” Iris finds the acces­sory to be the most impor­tant part of her wardrobe—and it would be easy to make this assump­tion at a quick glance. She is known to often layer chunky, beaded neck­laces and stack ban­gles of all shapes and col­ors on both arms from wrist to elbow. Her iconic extra-large, round, thick-frame glasses are her sig­na­ture stamp, mak­ing every­thing she wears that much cooler. Apfel loves eth­nic apparel and adorn­ments, and has picked up most of her beloved pieces while trav­el­ing across the globe.

A New York native, Iris grew up in Queens, the daugh­ter of two local busi­ness own­ers. Her mother ran a fash­ion bou­tique and her father owned a glass and mir­ror busi­ness. Raised in a house­hold with an appre­ci­a­tion for the finer things, Apfel nat­u­rally chose a career focused on the arts and design. Studying art and art his­tory in col­lege, her first job out of school was an appren­tice­ship as a copy­girl at Womens Wear Daily for mere $15 a week. She didn’t see much of a chance of mov­ing up the lad­der at WWD and found that inte­rior design would be a bit more lucra­tive. Iris fol­lowed in the foot­steps of her par­ents and began her own firm.

After work­ing on sev­eral projects, she noticed that she was hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time find­ing the fab­rics she kept imag­in­ing for her designs. It was at this point that she and her hus­band Carl decided to launch the leg­endary tex­tile firm Old World Weavers. During this time period, she served as the inte­rior dec­o­ra­tor for 9 pres­i­dents in the White House. (And Carl by the way, is also quite stylish—a cou­ple peas in a pod, these two).

Iris and Carl’s three-bedroom Park Avenue home in Manhattan is a clear reflec­tion of the adven­tur­ous, cul­tured, and ele­gant life they have built together. Intricate bro­cade fab­rics as well as antique fur­ni­ture, art and acces­sories from around the globe fill every square inch of their posh pad. Like all of her gar­ments, every item in her home exudes her per­son­al­ity. As she puts it, “through­out his­tory clothes rep­re­sented who you were; they are a great vehi­cle for explain­ing who you are.” 

It makes us happy to see such an accom­plished indi­vid­ual receive so much praise and atten­tion for her looks and style, even so late in her years. As we are cur­rently liv­ing in a world that is so youth-obsessed, it’s refresh­ing to find an inspi­ra­tion in some­one like Iris. We can’t wait to see what this true orig­i­nal does next.

And if you aren’t famil­iar with Ari Seth Cohen’s Advanced Style blog, we highly rec­om­mend you take a look. An Advanced Style doc­u­men­tary is in the works, set to debute this sum­mer, and if fea­tures our girl Iris! Please take a momet to watch the trailor below. We are totally dig­ging how whole heart­edly Cohen is embrac­ing the fash­ion­able endeav­ors of New York City’s older set. Enjoy!

Katherine Tyznik.HighStreet.New York