INCREDIBLE IRIS:
Self-proclaimed World’s Oldest Living Teenager Iris Apfel is celebrated the world over for her fabulously flamboyant style. At 96 and still topping best-dressed lists, Iris takes us back to where it all began in this exclusive extract from her new book, I
the 96-year-old fashion icon
BLACK-BELT BEGINNINGS
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.
In spring 1933, Easter was coming and I had no new finery suitable for walking down Fifth Avenue in the Easter Parade. My mother was too busy working to accompany me—she felt truly sorry about that. But she did give me the magnificent sum of twenty-five dollars to go out and assemble an outfit by myself. I spent my first five cents on the subway ride from Astoria to Manhattan’s S. Klein on the Square, probably the granddaddy of discount shopping and one of my mother’s regular shopping spots. I walked into the store and fell madly in love with a dress I saw on the first rack. I wanted to buy it very badly, but heeding Mama’s advice to never buy the first thing I saw, but to comparison-shop instead, I headed for the department stores uptown, where I saw nothing I liked. Suddenly, it occurred to me that someone else might’ve bought my dress. I panicked and headed back downtown to S. Klein, where I embarked on a breathless search for my prize, which was no longer in its original location. I found it on another rack fairly quickly. I grabbed it and gave thanks to God and $12.95 to the cashier. I then trucked down Fourteenth Street to A. S. Beck, the leading shoe emporium, where I selected a lovely pair of pumps for $3.95. That left enough money for a straw bonnet, a very light lunch, and five cents to get back home to Astoria.
My mother approved my fashion sense. My father praised my financial skill. Only my grandpa, who was an old-school master tailor, fussed and carried on about the button holes.
All in all, it was a big success and the beginning of my career as a black-belt shopper.
I buy clothing to wear it, not collect it. I’m always asked about my “favourite” this or my “favorite” that. I hate that question! If I like something, I just like it. It’s a gut feeling.
I didn’t set out to build a wardrobe, either. I bought pieces when I found them—and when I could afford to buy them. I built my wardrobe slowly. I’ve been fortunate to have assembled a collection of couture pieces, beginning in the 1950s when I often travelled to Paris for my textile businesses. I’d go to the ateliers of the haute couture at the end of the season and ask whether there might be any runway pieces available for sale. I discovered the houses— Lanvin, Nina Ricci, Christian Dior, and Jean-Louis Scherrer, for example—who used mannequins with torsos similar in dimension to mine. I couldn’t afford to have a one-of-a-kind piece made for me at a couturier. I also buy what I like; if a bracelet is fantastic and it’s only five dollars, all the better.
European flea markets were also a favorite haunt, and I found a lot of great pieces—not the usual ready-to-wear. One day while shopping at one of my favorite textile stalls I stumbled upon this eye-popping nineteenth-century chasuble in its original box. It had never been worn and was perfectly preserved. It was the typical outer vestment that a priest would wear during mass, except this one had sleeves. It looked like a magnificent tunic: ruby-red silk Lyonnaise velvet with a whole panel of silk broche’ and a border of handcrafted passementerie. Beautiful.
I wanted to buy it, which made Carl hopping mad.
“Absolutely not!” he said.
I think he didn’t want me to buy it because he believed people would think he couldn’t afford to buy me regular clothes. We were about to have one of our rare combustions, when the good Lord sent the renowned fashion journalist Eugenia Sheppard our way. She saw the piece and swooned, “Oh, my. How gorgeous!” In the end she was much better and less expensive than a marriage counsellor: Carl turned green and gave in.
I duplicated the fabric in our Old World
Weavers line, and had pants and slippers made to complete the outfit. I never wore anything so much in my life, and I still have the outfit. Actually, I found a number of chasubles in France—all nineteenth-century, well preserved, and never worn. I started to collect them, which, I suppose, is one avenue to building a wardrobe.
I will admit that I should get my closets in better order. I have a lot of pieces, and they’re all over the place—but who has time to organize? Certainly not me.
I just hang things up on pipe racks.
Most of the time I’m in such a rush that I can’t find things. I’m on this shoot, I’m on that shoot, I’m traveling. I don’t have time to unpack properly when I get home, and then I’m off again.
I’m often asked by my guests if they can see my closets, and I’ve had a hundred editors from big-time magazines ask if they can come over for a tour. That’s never going to happen.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
I was married for sixty-eight years. That is a long time to be together. Sometimes it felt like a century, sometimes it felt like a nano-second. We had a wonderful relationship; the hows, whys, and whens of it are too private and painful for me to relay at the moment, having recently lost my darling.
I met Carl Apfel very briefly while I was on a vacation at Lake George. A few weeks later, I had lunch at the Plaza with my mother and an old beau who was the buyer of haute couture for Neiman Marcus in Dallas. As he walked me back to my office that afternoon, we passed by Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue. We stopped for a while to talk about what caught our eye in the window.
That night, as I came home, the phone was ringing off the hook. It was Carl.
“I loved the hat you were wearing today,” he said. Then he went on to compliment my wonderful suit, my bag, my shoes—the whole outfit. Then he asked me out.
I couldn’t figure it out at first, but then he explained he had been stuck on a bus that had broken down on Fifth Avenue in front of Bonwit Teller at the time I happened to be standing there. We had a whirlwind courtship.
We had our first date on Columbus Day.
We got engaged on Thanksgiving Day.
I got blinged on Christmas Day.
We were married on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1948. I wore a strapless, pink lace dress. I sketched it, and a woman—a couturier whom my mother used to make special things— made the dress. It was fitted with a full skirt, and it had a little cape, which I wore for the wedding. I kept it to wear on formal occasions. I thought spending a lot of money on a wedding dress only to wear it once and put it in a box was pretty impractical.
We were married at the Waldorf Astoria. The ceremony was held there, with cocktails and dinner. It was a small affair, 120 people, but it was beautiful. And it was a pink wedding—I couldn’t have the décor clash with my dress!