Fern Mallis writes:
At one hundred years old, the self-proclaimed “world’s oldest teenager” and “geriatric starlet” is busier than anyone in New York City. She makes the Kardashians look like they are asleep. Tickets to our evening at the 92Y sold out in record time, twice! (thanks to an unplanned rain delay).
Iris has had one of the most colorful and fabulous lives imaginable, and it is one that she never planned. In her exotic life, she acquired an enviable collection of clothes and accessories that fill several rooms in her homes in New York City and Palm Beach, several museums …
… and at one time, all of Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue windows were taken over in celebration of her book: Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon.
Iris developed her famous sense of style and confidence at a very early age. She believes more is more, and less is a bore, and that color can raise the dead. You know you have made it when Mattel transforms your likeness into a Barbie doll.
Iris in her eighties started a whole new career out of just being Iris. She is anything but an “accidental icon.” She is proof positive that, “if you want to stay young, you have to think young; and to be interesting, you have to be interested.” She is not fond of the fashion industry’s obsession with youth, and wonders where all the dresses with sleeves are.
In her own words, “Seventy-year-old ladies don’t have eighteen-year-old bodies, and eighteen-year-olds don’t have a seventy-year-old’s dollars.”
Happy 100th Birthday, Iris! I hope you celebrate with caviar and an ice-cold Tito’s vodka with a few drops of Angostura bitters. I cannot wait to share the treasure trove of never-before-seen personal photos of your life and career we collected for my new book, Fashion Icons 2 (coming out in April 2022) featuring your interview with me!
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For a Limited Time Only, watch Fern Mallis’ Fashion Icons conversation with the newly minted centenarian Iris Apfel.