I’m obsessed with a woman I’ve never met! Its been this way for years. Is it possible to adore someone such as Iris Apfel, despite the fact I’ve never uttered a word to her? The answer is yes! Iris Apfel is one of the most incredible, inspiring, intelligent, simply incredible, women of all time…
When Iris Apfel was a young woman from Queens, New York, starting out in the fashion industry, Frieda Loehmann, founder of the famed department store, took her aside: “She said, ‘You’re not pretty and you’ll never be pretty, but it doesn’t matter. You have something much better. You have style.’ ”
Apfel will be turning 94 this August, but she doesn’t seem to be stepping out of the fashion spotlight anytime soon. Her career took off when she worked as an interior designer for the White House, although she is not supposed to talk about it, according to the documentary trailer. She eventually became a style icon with her wide, thick-rimmed glasses and vast collection of costume jewellery. Despite her impeccable fashion sense, Apfel is not one to judge because “it’s better to be happy then well-dressed.” Don’t you just love her?
Iris is the subject of a new documentary, out next month, by Albert Maysles—who, with his late brother David, directed such classics as Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens (oh, Grey Gardens; this is one of my favourite doco’s! If you haven’t seen it, you must). Without Apfel, whose idiosyncratic style and Mr. Magoo-size eyewear inspired a 2005–6 exhibition at the Met, we would likely not be seeing the rise of the senior supermodel: Joan Didion for Céline, Charlotte Rampling for Nars, Jessica Lange for Marc Jacobs Beauty, Joni Mitchell for Yves Saint Laurent. Apfel herself is the new face of Kate Spade.
This “rare bird of fashion,” as she is now known, first came to prominence in the 1950s, when she and her husband, Carl—who turned 100 during filming—founded Old World Weavers, a textile company hired by nine presidents for White House restorations. In Iris, we see Apfel mingle with Bruce Weber, Jenna Lyons, and Kanye West, while behind the closed doors of her Park Avenue apartment she quietly grapples with old age. Fashion, she says, never keeps her up at night. “Matters of health and things like that [do]. Things that are really important.”
Check out the trailer here:
I cannot wait to devour this fashion film. After watching the trailer, who’s with me?!
A Girl Interrupted By Fashion, Beauty & Anything Pretty That Catches My Eye
