Current:Home > MarketsIris Apfel, fashion icon known for her eye-catching style, dies at 102 -PureWealth Academy
Iris Apfel, fashion icon known for her eye-catching style, dies at 102
View
Date:2025-04-15 09:30:26
NEW YORK (AP) — Iris Apfel, a textile expert, interior designer and fashion celebrity known for her eccentric style, has died. She was 102.
Her death was confirmed by her commercial agent, Lori Sale, who called Apfel “extraordinary.” No cause of death was given. It was also announced on her verified Instagram page on Friday, which a day earlier had celebrated that Leap Day represented her 102nd-and-a-half birthday.
Born Aug. 29, 1921, Apfel was famous for her irreverent, eye-catching outfits, mixing haute couture and oversized costume jewelry. A classic Apfel look would, for instance, pair a feather boa with strands of chunky beads, bangles and a jacket decorated with Native American beadwork.
With her big, round, black-rimmed glasses, bright red lipstick and short white hair, she stood out at every fashion show she attended.
Her style was the subject of museum exhibits and a documentary film, “Iris,” directed by Albert Maysles.
“I’m not pretty, and I’ll never be pretty, but it doesn’t matter,” she once said. “I have something much better. I have style.”
Apfel enjoyed late-in-life fame on social media, amassing nearly 3 million followers on Instagram, where her profile declares: “More is more & Less is a Bore.” On TikTok, she drew 215,000 followers as she waxed wise on things fashion and style and promoted recent collaborations.
“Being stylish and being fashionable are two entirely different things,” she said in one TikTok video. “You can easily buy your way into being fashionable. Style, I think is in your DNA. It implies originality and courage.”
She never retired, telling “Today”: “I think retiring at any age is a fate worse than death. Just because a number comes up doesn’t mean you have to stop.”
“Working alongside her was the honor of a lifetime. I will miss her daily calls, always greeted with the familiar question: “What have you got for me today?,” Sale said in a statement. “Testament to her insatiable desire to work. She was a visionary in every sense of the word. She saw the world through a unique lens – one adorned with giant, distinctive spectacles that sat atop her nose.”
Apfel was an expert on textiles and antique fabrics. She and her husband Carl owned a textile manufacturing company, Old World Weavers, and specialized in restoration work, including projects at the White House under six different U.S. presidents. Apfel’s celebrity clients included Estee Lauder and Greta Garbo.
Apfel’s own fame blew up in 2005 when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City hosted a show about her called “Rara Avis,” Latin for “rare bird.” The museum described her style as “both witty and exuberantly idiosyncratic.
Her originality is typically revealed in her mixing of high and low fashions — Dior haute couture with flea market finds, 19th-century ecclesiastical vestments with Dolce & Gabbana lizard trousers.” The museum said her “layered combinations” defied “aesthetic conventions” and “even at their most extreme and baroque” represented a “boldly graphic modernity.”
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, was one of several museums around the country that hosted a traveling version of the show. Apfel later decided to donate hundreds of pieces to the Peabody — including couture gowns — to help them build what she termed “a fabulous fashion collection.” The Museum of Fashion & Lifestyle near Apfel’s winter home in Palm Beach, Florida, also plans a gallery dedicated to displaying items from Apfel’s collection.
Apfel was born in New York City to Samuel and Sadye Barrel. Her mother owned a boutique.
Apfel’s fame in her later years included appearances in ads for brands like M.A.C. cosmetics and Kate Spade. She also designed a line of accessories and jewelry for Home Shopping Network, collaborated with H&M on a sold-out-in-minutes collection of brightly-colored apparel, jewelry and shoes, put out a makeup line with Ciaté London, an eyeglass collection with Zenni and partnered with Ruggable on floor coverings.
In a 2017 interview with AP at age 95, she said her favorite contemporary designers included Ralph Rucci, Isabel Toledo and Naeem Khan, but added: “I have so much, I don’t go looking.” Asked for her fashion advice, she said: “Everybody should find her own way. I’m a great one for individuality. I don’t like trends. If you get to learn who you are and what you look like and what you can handle, you’ll know what to do.”
She called herself the “accidental icon,” which became the title of a book she published in 2018 filled with her mementos and style musings. Odes to Apfel are abundant, from a Barbie in her likeness to T-shirts, glasses, artwork and dolls.
Apfel’s husband died in 2015. They had no children.
___
Lifestyles Writer Leanne Italie contributed to this report.
veryGood! (94176)
Related
- Don't let hackers fool you with a 'scam
- Maryland cancels debt for parole release, drug testing fees
- Donald Glover Cancels Childish Gambino Tour Following Hospitalization
- Airbnb offering free temporary housing to displaced Hurricane Helene survivors
- House passes bill to add 66 new federal judgeships, but prospects murky after Biden veto threat
- Chancellor of Louisiana Delta Community College will resign in June
- Family plans to honor hurricane victim using logs from fallen tree that killed him
- San Francisco’s first Black female mayor is in a pricey battle for a second term
- Arkansas State Police probe death of woman found after officer
- Death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to 227 as grim task of recovering bodies continues
Ranking
- Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
- '19 Kids and Counting' star Jason Duggar and girlfriend Maddie tie the knot
- Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Spring Forward
- Billy Shaw, Pro Football Hall of Famer and Buffalo Bills great, dead at 85
- Nearly half of US teens are online ‘constantly,’ Pew report finds
- California vineyard owner says he was fined $120K for providing free housing to his employee
- FEMA has faced criticism and praise during Helene. Here’s what it does — and doesn’t do
- MLB playoffs: Four pivotal players for ALDS and NLDS matchups
Recommendation
Trump's 'stop
Will Lionel Messi play vs. Toronto Saturday? Here's the latest update on Inter Miami star
Nick Saban teases Marshawn Lynch about Seahawks pass on 1-yard line in Super Bowl 49
Virginia man charged with defacing monument during Netanyahu protests in DC
Newly elected West Virginia lawmaker arrested and accused of making terroristic threats
As affordable housing disappears, states scramble to shore up the losses
LeBron James' Son Bronny James Dating This Celeb Couple's Daughter
The Princess Diaries 3 Is Officially in the Works—And No, We Will Not Shut Up