Palm Beach’s own Iris Apfel has packed many careers in her 93 years. She has been a businesswoman, an interior designer, a university professor and a fashion icon whose sense of style inspired a major museum exhibition.
Never one to turn down a new adventure, she said yes three years ago to becoming the subject of a documentary film. She thus launched yet another career, as Apfel puts it, as a “geriatric starlet.”
The documentary, called simply “Iris,” became the final solo directing effort of the renowned Albert Maysles (“Grey Gardens,” “Gimme Shelter”), who died in early March. It opens in Atlanta on Friday, but the film almost never happened.
“At first, I wasn’t interested at all,” says Apfel with her usual forthright manner. “I just thought it was kind of silliness, because I wasn’t very well known and why would anyone be interested in a film about me?
“So to make a long story short, I said ‘no,’ and then Linda Fargo, who is one of the head people at Bergdorf-Goodman, a good friend of mine, said ‘You must be insane. People would drop dead to have Albert even take a still photograph of them, and you’re refusing? What’s wrong with you?’ ”
Eventually, Apfel changed her mind. “I went up to Harlem to his studios, I had a visit with the staff and we kind of fell in love. And so we decided to do it,” she says, peering over her signature oversized, round, black-framed glasses. “I did it on blind faith because there was no script, I had no idea what he had in mind. I don’t know whether he did either at the beginning. They just kind of followed me around to different events or came to the house and talked to us.”
Although Apfel is a celebrity in fashion circles and is likely to become more widely famous from the film, she insists, “I’m a very private person. I don’t discuss my affairs with people, even close friends.”
Having a film crew focused on her for almost a year is, she says, “intrusive in a way, and yet it’s very flattering at the tender age of 93 to be a geriatric starlet.”
Born in Astoria, Queens, in 1921, and schooled in art at New York University and the University of Wisconsin, Apfel learned about fashion on the job, working at the industry bible, Women’s Wear Daily. In 1948, she met and married Carl Apfel, and together they founded the fabric company Old World Weavers, running it side by side until they retired in 1992.
In retirement, Apfel had the time and the means to indulge her love of clothing and accessories, turning it into art with herself as the canvas. She likens her fashion sense to jazz.
“Because jazz is improvisation. I improvise,” she explains. “I take some things and mix them with other things that are unexpected. The way you do a riff with some notes that really shouldn’t be there, but it just does the trick.”
Apfel stands out in a social setting, but she insists that is not her intention. “I don’t try to be unconventional. Some people try very hard to be different. I don’t. I do what I want to do, and I hope it’s within bounds. I’m a great believer in being appropriate.
“I think one has to have a framework. I have great problems with unconstructed clothes and some contemporary art, where people think they can just do whatever they damn please. There have to be some rules and some designations.”
From 1950 to 1993, from Truman’s administration to Clinton’s, Apfel involved herself in the White House interior design restoration projects of nine presidents.
As she explains, though, that description is misleading. “You don’t do any interior design. A perfect historic restoration is just doing as exact a replica as you can of what went before. It could be the most hideous thing in the world.
“I remember when we were doing one of the early Teddy Roosevelt houses. It was so ghastly,” she says with a shudder. “It had all these dark, ugly puce-y colors, but we had to keep it that way, because that was the way it was. I mean, you’re not engaged to make a pretty house. God forbid if the First Ladies put their two cents in. Can you imagine a mix of, how shall we say, Mrs. Reagan and Hillary Clinton and Mamie Eisenhower?”
Just before launching her film career, Apfel went academic. In 2012, at the age of 90, she became a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, establishing a program to educate design students on the realities of the fashion industry. Documentarian Maysles heard about it and began pursuing the idea of a film on Apfel.
Any apprehensions she had about a movie of her life disappeared when she started working with Maysles, 88 when he died.
“We became very fond of each other. It’s a sad loss to the world, because his work was something special and he worked in his own particular way,” she says. “I admire people who do their own thing. It’s nice to do your own thing if you have a thing to do.”
Apfel does fashion her way with attention-getting flair, but she wants people to know that is not all she does. “I love clothes, I love to get dressed, but it’s not my life,” she says. “I was very worried that I would come off as some empty-headed fashionista, which I certainly am not. I didn’t want that to happen and it didn’t fortunately.”
Still, what first brought her to national attention was when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute did a show on her and her wardrobe in 2005. “Rara Avis (Rare Bird): The Irreverent Iris Apfel” was a big success, later travelling to the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach and other major institutions.
Asked to summarize her philosophy of style, Apfel answers without hesitation. “Attitude, attitude, attitude. I think you have to be yourself and if you really want individual style, you have to express yourself. Don’t come to me like everybody does and say, ‘How do I have style?’ I can’t tell you. You’ve got to know yourself and express yourself in the best possible way.
“I mean, if you’re not comfortable being very stylish and very fashionable, it doesn’t mean anything because you’ll be ill-at-ease and you won’t be happy. And to me, it’s much better to be happy than a fashion plate.
“My look just happens to be the way I see life,” says the indomitable Apfel. “If you don’t want to get to know yourself and express yourself, then don’t do it. It’s not urgent. The fashion police are not going to drag you away.”
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