Iris Apfel Read online

  Photo Credit: Jennifer Livingston/Trunk Archive

  Dedication

  FOR CARL

  Dedicating this book to my darling Carl is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. How can one express the emotions, pleasures, and pains of sixty-eight years? Everyone he ever touched knows he was truly a Gentle Man. His humor and generosity were legendary. We did almost everything together. His encouragement and unwavering support made this book possible. He pushed me into the limelight and then basked in my success. He got much more of a kick from the accolades I received than I did.

  I miss him madly. Sleep well, sweet prince.

  Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel

  AND FOR MY PARENTS

  This might be unusual, but I couldn’t go to press without a short ode to my parents. I adored Sam and Syd Barrel. They gave me life and this book that came with it. They provided me with both a super-solid foundation and an enormous passion for life. They were smart and strong, generous and funny. They were genuine world travelers, long before jet-setters existed.

  Daddio was a pure nonconformist and didn’t give a damn what anybody thought. He taught me to have the courage of my convictions. He instilled a sensible system of values and insisted I always read the right-hand side of a menu. He was the only person I ever knew who was intellectual and street-smart at the same time.

  Mama was stunningly stylish. Her look was quite different from mine. Fashion-forward and original, she was decades ahead of her time in all areas. She was a university graduate and went to law school when most of the women of her day were relegated to the kitchen. Besides her many talents she was a crackerjack businesswoman.

  It is only now at the end of writing this tome that I have come to the long overdue realization that my darling mother has indeed been my role model all these years.

  Photo Credit: Atelier Management: Roger Davies

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Musings A Fairy-Tale Beginning . . . of Sorts

  Black-Belt Beginnings

  One Size Doesn’t Fit All

  Mother Knows Best

  Style Versus Fashion

  Style Is in Your DNA

  Young Ladies Don’t Wear Jeans

  Improvisation

  Love and Marriage

  Aladdin’s Cave

  Concentration

  The Duke to the Rescue

  Matisse et Moi

  Your Smartphone Is Not Your Brain

  The Fame Game

  Optically Speaking

  Nice Work If You Can Get It

  Shoot from the Hip

  The White House Years

  The Language of Fabric

  Around the World in Eighty Years

  Let Them Eat Cake

  Where Is the House of Thy Father?

  Mind Your Peas & Q’s

  M·A·C and Me

  Use Your Imagination

  How to Live to Be 200

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  people to know my name or recognize my face.

  Photo Credit: Alique

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  to be called a fashion icon.

  Photo Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  museums to exhibit my clothing and accessories.

  Photo Credit: Peabody Essex Museum

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  Photo Credit: Frederik Leiberath/Courtesy M∙A∙C

  to be a cover girl or the face of a cosmetics company in my nineties.

  Photo Credit: Art Department: Jeremy Liebman; Jalou Media Group, L’Officiel, 2016

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  to have a One of a Kind Barbie doll made in my image.

  Photo Credit: Courtesy of Mattel

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  to draw a crowd . . .

  Photo Credit: Macy’s Merchandising Group Marketing & Creative Services

  Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Macy’s

  LET ALONE A MOB.

  Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Macy’s

  And I never expected to receive so many flattering awards or honors—by New York City at a ceremony at City Hall and another in Harlem, and still another by the city of St. Louis, where they issued an Iris Apfel Day.

  I NEVER EXPECTED

  that anyone would want to make a documentary about my life, much less have it be nominated for an Emmy Award.

  Photo Credit: Bruce Weber: Courtesy Magnolia Pictures

  Photo Credit: Luis Montiero. Styling by Damian Foxe and makeup by Marco Antonio.

  I NEVER EXPECTED TO WRITE THIS BOOK.

  I never expect

  ANYTHING.

  I just feel things in my gut and I do them.

  If something sounds exciting and interesting,

  I do it—and then I worry about it later.

  Doing new things takes a lot of energy and strength.

  It’s very tiring to make things happen, to learn how to master a skill, to push fears aside.

  Most people would rather just go with the flow; it’s much easier. But it’s not very interesting.

  And as I always say,

  “You have to be INTERESTED to be interesting.”

  Photo Credit: © Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection

  Photo Credit: Emma Summerton/Trunk Archive

  Photo Credit: Shane Drummond/BFA

  BELIEVE IT.

  WHEN YOU GET OLDER, as I often paraphrase an old family friend, if you have two of anything, chances are one of them is going to hurt when you get up in the morning. But you have to get up and move beyond the pain. If you want to stay young, you have to think young.

  Having a sense of wonder, a sense of humor, and a sense of curiosity—these are my tonic. They keep you young, childlike, open to new people and things, ready for another adventure.

  I never want to be an old fuddy-duddy; I hold the self-proclaimed record for being the World’s Oldest Living Teenager and I intend to keep it that way.

  Musings

  Photo Credit: Donald Robertson

  A Fairy-Tale Beginning . . . of Sorts

  Photo Credit: Eric Boman

  WITH A RING-A-DING-DING-DING from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in early spring 2005, a new chapter in my life began. Harold Koda, then the curator-in-charge at the Costume Institute, was on the line, making me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He wanted to do a small show of my fashion accessories and jewelry. The hitch was that it had to be completed within five months, or a nanosecond in the museum exhibition world, where shows are planned years in advance.

  I agreed because I thought all I had to do was place my things in beautiful cases.

  When Harold and the curatorial team visited me one morning to plan the show, he told me he had rethought the concept. To show accessories out of context didn’t make sense, said he, for the public would like to see what accessories could do for an outfit. Then he asked whether I would be willing to supply at least five outfits to “use as a canvas.” To be curatorially correct, he wanted to choose the outfits. My job would be to accessorize the mannequins as I would have accessorized myself sixty years ago or as I might wear them today with a new selection or a combination of the two.

  “What do you have to show me?” he asked.

  “What do you want to see?”

  “Let me look, let me look.”

  Little did they know they had just opened Pandora’s box. One closet led to another, and in the ensuing hours, we had peeked, pried, and pulled open every closet, every armoire, every drawer, every box
, and every storage bin I owned. At one point, I even saw someone looking under the bed. Clothing seemed to gush from every direction. Things got so chaotic we finally had to buy ten pipe racks, push all the furniture aside in the apartment, and hang up all the possible candidates. By the end of the day, the surface had barely been scratched.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow!” said Harold.

  For several consecutive days after the selections were made, a truck arrived to pick up clothes. The final haul: about three hundred pieces plus hundreds of accessories. I’m sure if they’d had to pay for all that packing and shipping, they would’ve thought twice about how much they pulled! They were lucky I lived close by. In the end, the show exhibited more than eighty outfits and hundreds of accessories. I styled the mannequins myself.

  When Rara Avis opened, I wasn’t known internationally like I am now, but that changed quickly. The exhibit went from a small show to a big one . . . to a blockbuster. The Met didn’t do any press-related material about me or display my photograph there. My nephew, Billy, went with different friends every weekend, then reported back with stories. He’d often hear people ask who I was. Once, he even heard someone say that I was dead, which wasn’t completely surprising, really, since this was the first time the Met had paid tribute to the style of a living woman who was not a fashion designer.

  But when I heard that, I said, “Billy, do me a favor. The next time you hear somebody say that, just tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘My auntie is alive and well. She’s just walking around to save funeral expenses.’”

  While the media coverage got the attention of a lot of fashion people, the real buzz began when my dear, dear friend, the late photographer and journalist Bill Cunningham, devoted his October 2, 2005, New York Times column On the Street to the show. He called it “In Her Image,” and his enthusiasm for the exhibit—“You needn’t fly to Europe to discover a marvelous, rare look at genuine style”—piqued everyone’s curiosity. After that, people came in droves, and from then on, it was all word of mouth. In her review of the show, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote, “Before multiculturalism was a word, Mrs. Apfel was wearing it.” I was stunned by the crowds and very flattered by the attention. I also figured once the show ended in January, that was going to be it. I’d be finished with the hoopla and go back to my old life.

  Photo Credit: CLINT SPAULDING/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

  But all of a sudden, people on the street knew me. I became cool to some—or hot—however you want to put it, yet I was no different than I was fifty years before. After the show opened, I was invited that fall to speak at New York University’s fashion program. One designer got up and said, “Your show is wonderful. With it, you’ve given New York its loveliest Christmas present in years. And what has New York done for you?”

  I blurted, “It’s made me a geriatric starlet.”

  I’m not one for labels, but that one stuck and amuses me, perhaps because it’s self-applied.

  AFTER THE MET EXHIBIT CLOSED, I was contacted by other curators who had seen the show and wanted to bring it to their own museums. Soon enough, Rara Avis hit the road. It ran for three months at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida. The following year, it ran for four months at the Nassau County Museum of Art, in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island. But it really took flight in October 2009, when it opened at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

  When the Norton came to me with the idea to do its own version of the exhibition, I was happy to oblige. And that wasn’t because I have a home in Palm Beach—the experience of accessorizing the looks at the Met was so thrilling that I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to do it again for a second iteration of the show, and again for a third. Whereas for the Met I only accessorized the looks, at the Norton, Nassau, and Peabody I designed and mounted the shows. No, I wasn’t lugging mannequins around, but the curators dressed them with my guidance. Not professional stylists themselves, they were happy to take my advice on where to place the mannequins, the clothes, and the accessories. I was really involved.

  When I worked on the Peabody show, a curator there told me that my approach to dressing and accessorizing reminded her of improvisation—the basis of jazz. That made sense to me, as I’ve been a big jazz fan since I was a kid. I like to improvise. I like to jump in and do things that excite me without thinking about them excessively. I trust my instincts. I guess you could say I’ve lived a jazz life.

  The Peabody will always hold a special place in my heart, not just because of its own excellent costume collection, but also because the curators there are now the custodians of my collection of accessories, clothes, and shoes. Every year since the show closed there, they have visited me and each time they come, we determine which pieces they are going to take with them back to the museum. Someday when I leave this earth, the Peabody Essex is going to have my full wardrobe—well, unless I change my mind.

  Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel

  Photo Credit: Eric Boman

  Photo Credit: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

  Photo Credit: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

  SINCE THE SHOWS WRAPPED, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with a lot of wonderful creative pople. I don’t have an agent or any person that is in charge. I don’t have a website and I don’t do social media, although I know people post pictures and drawings they’ve done of me.

  Not only do I not do social media, I don’t approve of it. What I eat, what I’m doing, where I’m going—that’s nobody’s business. And I have a rule: I don’t do selfies—what better way to get sick than to have someone with a cold just stick their head up against yours and cough in your face?

  At a dinner party several years ago, the host told me that she saw a photo on my Facebook page that caught her eye.

  I said, “What’s Facebook? I have no such thing!”

  The “yes, you dos” and “no, I don’ts” went on for ten minutes, until she summoned a laptop. I took a close look at “my” Facebook page and there in the lower left-hand corner was a picture of my husband, Carl. Underneath, the caption read: “This is my darling husband, Joey.” Well, I might not be the brightest candle on the cake, but I told my host that after sixty-some years of marriage, I thought I would know my husband’s name. It was only then that she believed me.

  I’ve been told that I have more than six hundred thousand followers on Instagram as of this writing, which is crazy, but I have nothing to do with it. People tell me “my” page is fairly well curated. It is run by a lovely young woman named Parisa, who lives in Vienna. We’ve spoken a couple of times since I learned of her handiwork, but I have no idea where she gets the pictures. Like I say, this woman is lovely, and I’m flattered that people have posted things about me, but I personally have no interest in doing it myself.

  I don’t give out my phone number, either, except to a select few, so nobody knows how to reach me. Somehow I still get calls from all over the world. They have found me through another source—through a museum, or by knowing someone who worked with me on a previous project, or from a mutual friend or someone else or something. People go through all kinds of shenanigans to find me, which is very nice, and it also lets me know they’re serious about interviewing me or collaborating on some sort of project. By the time they get to me, though, they are usually very relieved and a bit grumpy because it’s not like I’ve made it easy for them. But that’s not on purpose; technologically, I live in the late seventeenth century. When people ask if they can send me an email, I say, “No darling. You can’t do that. Send a pigeon. All I have is a quill and a candle.”

  Photo Credit: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

  Photo Credit: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

  Photo Credit: Eric Boman

  Photo Credit: Eric Boman

  Photo Credit: Courte
sy of Iris Apfel

  After Rara Avis opened at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, people kept telling me I was an overnight sensation.

  “You’re right,” I would reply, “Except my overnight was seventy years!”

  Photo Credit: Macy's Merchandising Group Marketing & Creative Services in partnership with Snaps Media Inc.

  Photo Credit: David Downton

  Although I’m in my 90S, I still feel like I’m

  5½

  Photo Credit: Modern Kids: Sarah Hebenstreit

  because I always look at the world like I’m discovering it for the first time.

  If I could remain one age forever, I wouldn’t. I don’t believe in that.

  Photo Credit: Beauty & Photo: Blue Illusion Fall/Winter 2016/Photograph by Daniela Federici

  But if I could do a little time travel, I’d like to be in one of Gertrude Stein’s literary salons in Paris or attend a performance by the Ballets Russes, when Diaghilev was still staging the productions. I might like to stop in at the Harem in Istanbul during the eighteenth century. Then I’d stay right there but travel back to the sixth century, when it was still Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

  Photo Credit: John Huba/Art + Commerce

  Black-Belt Beginnings

  Photo Credit: Berenice Abbott/Getty Images

  I STARTED BUYING my own clothes when I was twelve. My mother—who always dressed beautifully and was extraordinary for her time in that she went to college and then law school but dropped out when she was pregnant with me—went back to work, opening a boutique during the Great Depression.