The inimitable style icon Iris Apfel has died at the age of 102, her representatives have confirmed. The American fashion designer and self-described ‘geriatric starlet’ was known for her distinctive, upbeat approach to clothing, regularly appearing in the front rows at Fashion Week and collaborating with the likes of Estée Lauder and Greta Garbo during her career. In tribute, we revisit a piece Apfel wrote for Bazaar in 2020, in which she affirms her philosophy that “fashion should always be fun.”
I’ve loved fashion since I was a little girl. I always loved to dress up, and my mother was very chic. She was with me until I was about eleven, when she went back to work and left me to my own devices. I remember one time when Easter was coming up and I didn’t have an outfit to wear for the big parade down Fifth Avenue. It was the height of the Great Depression and my mother was too busy setting up her business to take me shopping, so instead she said, “I’ll give you $25,” which was a generous amount at the time. was money. and you can go into town and buy an outfit – it will be a good experience.
I went crazy with joy and headed straight to S Klein, the granddaddy of all discount stores on 14th Street in Manhattan, because I knew I would get a good bargain there. I immediately found a dress that I thought I just had to buy, but then I remembered my mother telling me never to buy the first thing I saw, which I had to compare. So I went into town and looked around the big department stores – Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, Best & Company – where everything was of course much more expensive. I decided I better go back and get that dress, but when I got there I noticed it was gone! I was in a panic and breathlessly looked through all the racks, found it, thanked God and gave 12 dollars and 98 cents to the cashier. I placed that dress in my pretty hands and proceeded to decorate my prize. I bought a pair of beautiful leather shoes for three dollars and 98 cents, a nice straw hat, a pair of gloves, and I still had enough change to take the subway to Queens. My family was overjoyed: my mother praised my taste; my father said I was economically sound. Only my grandfather, who was an old-fashioned master tailor, found faults in the buttonholes. But on the other hand, he could never find a buttonhole that satisfied him.
To me, jewelry is the most transformative part of a woman’s wardrobe; it can change the look of an entire outfit. You can wear the same outfit from morning to cocktail hour simply by putting on new accessories. I especially like fantasy jewelry because I think the artists who create it are freer in their approach. I’ve been collecting pieces since I was 11 years old, and I still have the first one I ever owned. I bought it from a store in the basement of a tenement building in Greenwich Village – it was full of all kinds of junk, but I mentally transformed it into Aladdin’s cave. The store was owned by an elegant older gentleman who had fallen on hard times. While the cuffs of his suit were frayed, he always wore a boutonniere, a monocle and gaiters. He was fascinated by me because he had never seen a child so interested in his mess. Upon arrival he kissed my hand and treated me like a mini duchess… I was in love. There was a brooch that I loved that had beautiful pieces of glass in it that I thought were rose cut diamonds. I was very imaginative then. He gave me a price that was much higher than what I could afford, but I saved my pennies and once I had what I thought was a respectable amount, I went back to negotiate with him. We haggled and haggled, and finally he gave it to me for 65 cents. I cherish it to this day.
Eager to break into editorial fashion, I took a job at Women’s Wear Daily in New York – the lowest job you could get. Now everything is electronic, but back then publishers hired copy boys and girls to take pages from one editor to another. For the wonderful sum of fifteen dollars a week I was constantly walking back and forth around this freakish building. The only good thing about that job was that it meant I didn’t have to go to the gym anymore! Still, I loved magazines. Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue were my bibles – I couldn’t wait for the next issue to come out, and I read them all cover to cover.
I think it’s really funny that I’m considered a style icon these days. My husband [Carl Apfel, who died in 2015] and it always makes me laugh because I don’t do anything I didn’t do 70 years ago – it seems to be finally catching on. I always like to dress in my own way; I’m not like everyone else. I notice a lot of people say they want to be individual, but they only give lip service. I often say, “It’s better to be happy than to be well dressed,” by which I mean it’s great to look good, but when it becomes a chore and makes you nervous and uncomfortable, it’s not worth it. Life is very gray and the world is not the friendliest place, so I think fashion should always be fun. For the past ten years I’ve been trying to get people to understand that. Some of them have written to tell me that I have given them courage and joy, and some have even said that I have changed their lives. I am grateful for that.
I have been in quarantine for over three months now. But I don’t bore myself – I enjoy my own company, and really, lockdown has been a blessing in disguise as I’ve been working like crazy and it’s been ten years since I’ve had a holiday. I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so I was very tired and had a wonderful enforced rest. My apartment is right on the water in Palm Beach and I consider myself lucky to be able to sit on my patio every day.
I always enjoy making people happy, especially at a time like this, and I have a lot of fun with my Instagram feed. So back in March I said to my followers: since you’re home and have nothing better to do, why don’t you take everything out of your closets, put everything together in a fun, creative way and then send me some photos? The thing took off like wildfire: more than 3,000 people from over 65 countries connected with some amazing photos, not just of women, but of men and babies and dogs and kitties. Last week someone submitted a set of dog portraits all dressed in outfits of mine, so I posted them with the caption “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
My philosophy is to live in the now – yesterday is gone, you don’t know if there will even be a tomorrow, so you might as well enjoy today. As my husband always said, you really have to live every day as if it were your last, because one day you will be right.
As told to Frances Hedges
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