The world of fashion is in mourning for Iris Apfel, a over one hundred year old top model always on the cutting edge. Mythical style icon whose wardrobe was at the center of a Met exhibition in 2005, Iris died at the age of 102 in her home in Palm Beach, Florida. Calling herself a "geriatric starlet", but also "the oldest teenager in the world", she had found fame in her eighth decade of life with her irreverent, extravagant and always multicolored outfits.
She paired boxy Bill Bass jackets with Hopi skirts, amaranth feather coats with knee-length leather jeans. The last image - a photomontage perhaps - posted just two days ago on Instagram to celebrate her "102 and a half years", portrayed her in a white satin trouser dress under a cape of the same color, the iconic maxi-circle glasses black and countless jewels on them.
A recognized expert in antique fabrics, Iris had contributed to renovating, as an interior designer, the White House of nine presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton, as well as the homes of celebrities such as Greta Garbo and Estée Lauder. Fearless testimonial of the anti-ageism movement, she had been at the center of advertising campaigns for H&M, for which she had designed a colorful capsule collection, eBay, Citroen, Magnum, Happy Calze and Mac, becoming a professional model on the threshold of one hundred years. There is also a Barbie in her image and likeness. With nearly three million followers on Instagram, she still attended major fashion events and sometimes walked the catwalk, albeit in a wheelchair.
Born in Astoria to Jewish parents, starting in the 1950s she had worked as an interior designer with her husband Carl Apfel, with whom she founded the Old World Weavers company which sold and restored fabrics after visits to museums and bazaars around the world. The Apfels retired in 1992 but Iris continued to collect clothes and stand out as a free spirit, ignoring the dictates of the catwalks in favor of a personal style. In 2005, faced with a cancellation and a hole in the calendar, the Met's Costume Institute approached her with a bold proposal: an exhibition of her wardrobe, the first of its kind to enter the closets of a living character . Thus was born Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel which was followed by the documentary by Albert Maysles presented at the New York Film Festival in 2014 and the memoirs, Icon by chance. Reflections of a senior star, published on the occasion of his hundredth birthday.
(Unioneonline/D)