The World Loses A Fashion Legend: Iris Apfel Dead At 102

As famed designer Tommy Hilfiger told the BBC, “Iris Apfel has become a world-famous fashion icon because of her incredible talent not only as an artist, but as an influencer. She has had an amazing effect on so many people with her huge heart and magic touch with everyone she meets”.

Let’s get started by finding out about Apfel’s origins. Born in 1921 into a Jewish household in the Astoria district of Queens, New York, she was the only child of Samuel Barrel and his wife, Sadye, a Russian emigre. Her father was employed in the family business making mirrors and glass, and her mother ran a clothes boutique. 

Apfel also revealed one of her earliest memories in that interview. She recalled that aged just four she’d been perched on a stool while yelling at her mother, angered by the ribbon that her mom had chosen for her. 

With whole-hearted encouragement from her mother, by the age of 12 Apfel was already doing the rounds of markets, thrift stores, and discount outlets on the hunt for prize items. She was developing her passion and eye not just for clothes but for shoes, jewelry, and bric-a-brac as well. 

Actually raised on a farm in Queens where both her parents and grandparents lived, Apfel made frequent sorties into Manhattan to satisfy her shopping habit. Speaking in 2015 to Megan Conner of The Guardian, she even admitted that she played hooky every Thursday afternoon for her shopping outings. 

In fact Greenwich Village played a large part in her childhood memories. This came to the fore in the 2015 Netflix documentary about her life, simply titled Iris. “The first piece I ever bought was in Greenwich Village. I was about maybe 11, 12 years old,” she said.

Her vivid memories of the Village shone through in the documentary. “There was this little man. His name was Mr. Darris, and he was threadbare but elegant. He always wore spats and a monocle…”

“I fixed on a brooch,” Apfel recalled. “I just thought it was the cat’s pajamas. And I really lusted after that piece. We haggled a little bit over the piece. I thought it had been gone, but fortunately for me it was still there.”

Never one to shrink from the unvarnished truth, Apfel also told Conner that she wasn’t pretty as a child. She went to on to say that, “I wasn’t pretty when I got married either, and I never cared. I never liked pretty. I mean, it’s nice, don’t misunderstand me, but I never got upset”.

Apfel remembered going shopping with her mother: something of an ordeal, it seems. “By the end of the day she’d be bedraggled and tell the assistants, ‘Oh just bring out anything that will fit her.’”

Apfel's mother was so concerned about her daughter’s weight that she took her to the doctor. “[My weight] drove my poor mother crazy, because she was very elegant and she wanted me to be dolled.”

Having survived the rigors of adolescence, Apfel headed for New York University to study art history. But in 1940 she transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where she spent three years doing an art degree. 

Apfel also picked up a teaching qualification and actually taught for a short while in Wisconsin before heading back to New York City. There she embarked on a career in fashion journalism.

Johnson appreciated Apfel’s highly original design sense and refusal to stick to established principles of décor and fashion. The future icon’s early work with Johnson gave her just the platform she needed to launch her own interior-design business. 

In the Netflix documentary Apfel remembered her wedding. “I never wanted a wedding; I wanted to elope”, she recalled. In fact she did have a formal ceremony, “It was a fairly small wedding — I think 125 people — but very posh”.

And it wasn’t just the dress that Apfel hung on to — there were also her wedding shoes. She told her Netflix interviewer, “I still have these shoes, 66½ years later,” she said. “They were pale pink satin. They’re back in style.”

Two years into their marriage — which would last until Carl’s death in 2015 — the couple went into business together. The pair founded a textiles and interior décor company called Old World Weavers. 

Speaking about their business in the Netflix show Carl said, “She had a very big decorating business. I would go along with her. I’d take my little toolbox, hang the pictures.”

In fact Old World Weavers continued to flourish for 42 years until the couple sold the business in 1992. During the decades it operated, the duo traveled extensively — to the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia — in search of unique textiles.

The Apfels now began to get invites to social events hosted by some of their high-society clients. These parties, thrown by the likes Estée Lauder and Greta Garbo, gave the designer the opportunity to try out some of her trademark outfits. 

But perhaps most distinguished of all the clients who looked to Apfel to provide their décor was the White House. She worked for a succession of no fewer than nine presidents, from Truman and Eisenhower right through to Reagan and Clinton.

But there was a proviso to Apfel’s assessment of working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She said it had been easy “until Mrs. Kennedy came along. She employed a very famous Parisian designer to gussy up the house and make it a real Frenchie, and the design community went bananas”

The Apfels seem to have had a very happy marriage. Evidence for this came in that Netflix documentary when Carl was remembering his first impressions of his future wife. “There was something about her that just got into me.”

The deep affection they clearly felt for each other perhaps makes it all the stranger that they never had children. In her interview with Hodson, Apfel offered an explanation. Because she and her hubby traveled so much for their business, children just wouldn’t have fitted in.

As we’ve said, Apfel and her husband sold their business in 1992. By then she was around 70, and for many mere mortals after a successful career, the next logical step would have been retirement.

On the Today show, Apfel expressed strong views on retirement. “I think retiring at any age is a fate worse than death. Just because a number comes up doesn’t mean you have to stop”.

In her interview with Hodson, Apfel enlarged on her sometimes caustic opinions about aging and fashion. And in truth, few people have ever been better qualified to comment on those topics!

Apfel went on to point out, “In America it has been proven that the bulk of spending money is in the hands of women between 60 and 80, so it’s so stupid.

She told Hodson that older women often complained to her about sleeves on dresses, or the lack of them. “I think when you’re paying $15,000 for a dress you’re entitled to a pair of sleeves. It makes me crazy”.

Apfel’s rant against ageism in fashion continued. “And why… [do] they use these models who look 15? How can an older woman relate to a little kid running up and down the runway? You can’t.”

“Learn who you are and stay true to yourself”, she told Holt. “Don’t follow trends. Buy clothes that work for you, not because they are trendy, and you will have them a lifetime and always look great.”

Apfel had more fashion advice when she gave an interview to Harper’s Bazaar in 2022 which marked both her 100th year and the launch of a new range for retailer H&M. 

So how did Apfel manage to stay so much in the public eye despite her advancing years? One of the main reasons was a 2005 exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, when she had already reached the age of 83. 

Harold Koda, the curator at the Metropolitan’s Costume Institute, had a gap in his exhibition schedule due to an inconvenient last-minute cancellation. Hunting for a solution, happily Koda had a sudden brainwave.

As Conner put it in The Guardian, “The response was unprecedented. People loved Apfel’s wacky combinations, and virtually overnight a new fashion star was born”. And after this triumph, offers of work poured in.

Many companies wanted Apfel to be the face of their product — and it wasn’t just fashion businesses that came knocking on her door. In 2016 she appeared in a TV ad for a French car.

Sadly in 2015 Apfel lost the love of her life, Carl, the man to whom she’d been married for 68 years. He died just three days short of his 101st birthday and naturally, the designer was devastated. 

Apfel talked about the success of her marriage in an Instagram Live interview with designer Alexis Bittar in 2023. She insisted, “First of all you have to like each other.” 

Finally on the first day of March 2024 Apfel herself departed for the great fashion emporium in the sky. Tributes to this magnificent woman poured in. One who had known her well was her agent Lori Sale, who spoke to Associated Press.