Opinion
Death of the fashion icon
“Whatever you want to do, you have to try it”: We should all be more like Iris Apfel
She didn’t think much of rules and age – the trained interior designer and style icon Iris Apfel
© Gregory Zach
The oldest teenager in the world, according to her own statements, has died at the age of 102. What we can learn from Iris Apfel.
When Iris Apfel was no longer strong enough to go to press events, she was pushed around in a wheelchair, still happily waving and styling even at over 100. Age took away her energy, but not her joy of life and style. In a world where almost all public figures over 50 look strangely the same—cheeks plumped, skin tightened, forehead sprayed—she stood out.
The media called her a “fashion icon” and she called herself a “geriatric starlet.” Iris Apfel’s humor and self-irony were just as iconic as her outfits and were good for the fashion scene. She found it terrible that people took themselves so seriously. Apfel, who has now died at the age of 102, didn’t even try to adapt to her industry. And that’s exactly why she became successful and could be a role model for all of us. “If you want to be everything to everyone, you become nothing to no one,” she wrote in her autobiography “Color foul.” That’s why Iris Apfel decided to just be Iris Apfel.
Unusual, colorful dresses and nerdy glasses with huge round lenses became her trademarks. Apfel said in the documentary that she was never pretty “Iris”. And if you’re not pretty, you have to develop other strengths and qualities that will make you much more interesting as you get older. Everyone has time for this if they only want to. Apfel, born in 1921 to Jewish parents in the New York borough of Queens, proved that it is never too late for anything.
At 97, Iris Apfel started as a model
At an age when others slowly doze towards death in their wing chairs and ponder in a few waking moments that everything used to be better, her career reached its peak. Together with her husband Carl, she advised nine US presidents on furnishing the White House as an interior designer. But she only became famous by chance. Everything important in her life happened by chance, said Apfel, showing all five-year career optimizers that it’s possible even without a strict plan. She hated that. She was lucky and well prepared. Like in 2005, when the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled an exhibition at short notice.
The curator Harold Koda suggested Iris Apfel, with her trove of extravagant clothing, as a replacement. So the then 84-year-old put together a collection for the museum from her wardrobe and jewelry boxes – which was so impressive that it caused a stir. After years, it was finally worth it that Apfel had hardly thrown away any clothes. She became a star, an influencer and a fashion role model.
It is said among bookers that girls are too old to start modeling at 19, Apfel started at 97. The renowned agency IMG Models signed her. She never felt too old for anything and in doing so she encouraged women all over the world and even set new trends. A striking number of “granny models” can be seen at the current fashion shows. Apfel called the fact that fashion is mostly tailored to young people “simply ridiculous.” She despised the youth craze and didn’t believe in cosmetic surgery or rejuvenation measures. “I don’t see anything wrong with wrinkles. To me, they are my medals of bravery,” she said. Sentences that you rarely hear in a time when even young people go for Botox injections during their lunch break.
“You only have this one life”
Apple was never primarily about looks. “Being happy is better than being well-dressed,” she once told the “Mirror”. She was always about style. Style is attitude and not a question of age. By the way, none of the money either – she learned that from her mother, a former owner of a fashion boutique in Queens. Even as part of New York’s better society, she enjoyed shopping at flea markets and sometimes at H&M, “I’m not too good for that,” she said the magazine of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” revealed.
She stayed away from rules anyway: “I would have just broken them, what a waste of time.” And so, throughout her life, she broke one social rule after another without giving it much thought. She didn’t have children because having children was like a rule back then – “and I don’t like that.” Instead, she made a career as an interior designer, appeared as an old lady in advertising, modeled in her 90s and had herself photographed again and again, not only despite but also because of her age.
Apfel proved that what almost everyone fears – growing old – can also be something that can be turned and used for the better. That it keeps you young to always try new things and that it’s worth it. “Whatever you want to do, you have to try it,” said Iris Apfel in her documentary. “You only have this one life, don’t forget that.”