“Geriatric Starlet”
Fashion icon Iris Apfel dies at the age of 102
March 2, 2024, 5:15 a.m
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With extravagant outfits and huge glasses, the interior designer and design expert Iris Apfel became a fashion icon in the noughties. When she signed a modeling contract in 2019, she was 97 years old. Now the New Yorker has died.
Legendary US interior designer and fashion icon Iris Apfel is dead. The self-described “geriatric starlet” died at the age of 102, her manager confirmed. Apfel, known for her extravagant outfits, huge round glasses and her sharp-tongued sense of humor, had just met the day before posted on Instagram, where she is followed by 2.9 million people. Until recently, she was also a regular guest at fashion shows, to which she appeared in a wheelchair.
Born in 1921 into a Jewish family in the New York borough of Queens, Apfel first studied art history and then worked as an interior designer. The design team she founded with her husband Carl worked on the interior design of the White House for nine US presidents, among others.
Over the decades, Apfel, who was also a textile expert, collected a huge number of designer clothes. When the Metropolitan Museum in New York dedicated an exhibition to her wardrobe in 2005, it cemented her status as a style icon. Apfel also worked with large companies such as H&M and appeared in an advertising campaign for the car brand Citroën. The filmmaker Albert Maysles created a memorial to her in 2014 with the documentary “Iris.” At the age of 97, she signed a contract with the well-known modeling agency IMG.
Apfel always encouraged women to dress unusually and not to follow a one-size-fits-all look. “Dare to be different. Be yourself, be individual,” she once said. “If you wear something and it doesn’t suit you, don’t worry. The style police won’t arrest you.”