Iris Apfel: A designer for the ages
Supernatural eccentric ladies
When I heard Iris Apfel had passed away aged 102, I decided I needed to write a design series about my favourite eccentric ladies. The eccentric likes of Tilda Swinton, Frida Kahlo, Erykah Badu, the character of Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara), Cher, Jennifer Coolidge, and Meghan Mulally - have always captured my heart. I am would love to analyse their overall aesthetic and the public character we all know. These women have all ascended to great cultural heights and given their fans a transcendental experience with their otherness. But what specifically do people like Iris Apfel do to become cultural monoliths?
Well for a start, no one else dressed like Iris. When you google ‘eccentric’ Iris’s face comes up as an image as if she epitomised that whole word. Iris was very eccentric and was usually pictured wearing too much of everything over her tiny bird-like body topped off with a completely unjustifiably large pair of spectacles. She wore so much jewellery that it must have felt quite heavy on her body. Iris made herself ornamental in that way, behaving like a human jewellery rack despite busily working as an interior designer. There was no direct utility in wearing too much, she just liked how it made her look regardless of the inconvenience and this is a core facet of glamour. You have to commit to the bit. In what my friend Annie would call the glamourous-practical dichotomy, Iris was very, very glamourous.
Design-wise Iris leaned hard into maximalism using many patterns and textures simultaneously, often united by loud colour. She was an interior designer (for the White House) by trade and this industry exposed her to textiles not available in shops and influenced her personal style. Her company Old World Weavers imported textiles from all over the world and her most famous print was the ‘tiger’ or ‘tigres’ printed fabric. Featured below is Iris sitting in a perfectly designed room with leopard skin wallpaper and a Pinnochio with leopard faux fur booties. Pouring pattern on pattern and combining it with colour and humour. Classic Iris.
Most famously Iris made her glasses a spectacular piece of jewellery. Glasses have a long tawdry history of having the world’s shortest fashion cycle considering the upfront cost. Many people work to make them as invisible and fashion-resistant as possible but not Iris. Her black, thick-rimmed frames took up one-third of her face. To me, she looked like a chic owl or fancy grasshopper. She made her glasses the first thing you saw and timeless - an ethereal quality.
Speaking of ethereal, Iris was one of those enigmatic Ted Dansen-types who looked better as she got older. I found pictures of Iris as a young person and her signature look was definitely perfected in her later years, even as a centurion. Her style developed with time as she intentionally and publically ‘aged gracefully’. Iris had a youthful and curious spirit and her brand was so identifiable as a fashionable older woman that I was oddly shocked to hear she was 102 when she died. I think she wisely designed for her aging body and through that awareness, she always looked great.
It seems to be common for eccentric folk to also be just as wise as they are eccentric. Iris had a lot of sage advice about style and wisdom such as,
When you don't dress like everybody else, you don't have to think like everybody else.
What an interesting observation. I think that Iris felt that her clothes permitted her to think differently and therefore she was fundamentally changed as a person. It looks like she felt the larger the bangle the more daring the idea. She was like a rebellious, subversive, and fashion design activist particularly for older women and this is what I mean when I say that Iris was other. Being other is when you don’t belong to the mainstream, you are recognised socially as being something else. She used her clothes to tell people she felt good about herself, that she liked bold design and her own style. People like Iris are unbothered by others because they like themselves and who they become when they are different. A unusual trait that I think was key to Iris being so admired.
Enough has been said and yet not enough at all, a fashionable titan who once said “more is more and less is a bore” - RIP Iris Apfel you will be very much missed.
