Colorful, creative, eclectic and energetic. This is the legacy in book form that the fashion prescriber Iris Apfel wrote last year, at 102 years oldshortly before dying and knowing that ‘Colourful’ (Libros Cúpula) would be his great posthumous work, to safeguard his example of vitality, his own style, enthusiasm and imagination that broke down age barriers.
The irreverent American businesswoman and interior designer, who died last March, became famous as an adultat the age of 84, a condition that finally cleared her mind of modesty and false modesty and led her to publicly show, without hesitation, her particular taste for clothing and accessories, but above all the fabrics and the coloras a vehicle of communication, fun and even a form of art.
She had been linked to the industry almost all her life. He studied art history and dedicated himself to interior designuntil in 1950 she founded, together with her husband Carl, with whom she had a 70-year love story until his death in 2015, the textile manufacturing company Old World Weavers.
The firm of the couple, who had no children, specialized in reproduce old fabricssomething that always fascinated her, led her by the hand to discover the world and pushed her to explore mixtures and daring designs both in her own home in New York – frequent in decoration magazines – and in her closet, loaded with vintage pieces that he could combine with the most current and ground-breaking ones as well as without hesitation mixing big brands with flea market finds.
There was nothing pastel or neutral in their outfits. His were always the intense colorsthe provocation through them, the daring in the ranges and the maximalismsince each of her looks was made up of several overlapping pieces (“more is more and less is a bummer,” she maintained) and accessories of all kinds and large sizes, such as her legendary horn-rimmed glasses, beaded necklaces and long earrings.
Although his favorites were red and turquoisehe dared with all the colors. «Color matters. It stimulates something inside us (…) It is a precious gift that must be used wisely,” he advises in the book, which contains more than 300 photographs from his personal archive.
Apfel never went unnoticed thanks to its baroque image. First he stood out within New York society, then in fashion and interior design circles and, finally, in the media and social networks, where his Instagram account was followed by more than 3 million people. She was put on the world map first, in 2005, by the exhibition dedicated to her by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (‘Rara avis: The irreverent Iris Apfel’) and then, a few years later, the documentary about his life that Netflix made (‘Iris’).
Apfel assures in this kind of biography that he always dressed in an outlandish way to give outlet to his restless, experimental and creative nature (“style can be a physical manifestation of your spirit,” he writes), and also a little to counteract the neatness and aesthetic discipline of his mother university student and hard worker, someone ahead of her time and whom she recognizes as her great influence, thanks to her good taste, elegance and sense of humor.
On her 100th birthday, photographed by Ruvén Afanador (photo from the book ‘Colourful’)
Lover of jazz and travel, in addition to technicolor, his style was based on textures and printswhich were, as revealed in ‘Colourful’, a map of his life journey and the inspiration he received in Europe, thanks to its history and architecture, and the beauty and wealth discovered in places like Morocco, Turkey or Lebanon, where he went with her husband searching for patterns and fabrics in bazaars and street markets for her company, which among other clients served the White House.
Although he had become a model of style, Apfel defends in his work the path that each person should follow. «I don’t want you to dress like me, or think like me, That is not the idea of this book. I want you to think for yourself, to find the colors, confidence and creative inspiration that characterize you. Explore your imagination. Believe in your instincts. I am guided by them,” he warns.
By staying active until the end of his long life (“I never want to retire. I enjoy working. I believe that hard work is my medicine, my salvation,” he admits), and thanks to the amplification of his message that he had especially on social networks, Apfel also became an example of ageless vitality and an emblem of the fight against prejudices linked to it. As a good influencer, she left her advice written: “To stay young, it is important to keep learning” and, even closer to that digital world, “Don’t procrastinate. Nothing replaces experience«.
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