Iris Apfel

The phone rang in a Park Avenue apartment. On the other end, a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The message was simple but stunning: we want to exhibit your wardrobe.

Iris Apfel was 84 years old.

For more than six decades, she had lived in relative obscurity. Sure, she’d worked on some of the most prestigious interiors in America—the White House under nine presidents. Yes, she’d traveled the globe sourcing rare textiles through her company, Old World Weavers, which she ran with her husband Carl. But that was business. Professional. Respectable.

Her real life? That lived in her closet.

A Nickel and a Dream

Born on August 29, 1921, in Queens, New York, Iris Apfel was the only child of Jewish parents who gave her two very different models of the world. Her father worked in glass and mirrors—practical, solid, reflective. Her mother owned a fashion boutique—creative, expressive, transformative. From an early age, Iris learned to balance practicality with imagination.

As a child, she’d ride the subway into Manhattan for a nickel, disappearing into thrift shops and antique stores. While other kids played with dolls, Iris hunted for treasures—objects with stories, pieces with character, things that whispered of distant places and forgotten times.

She never outgrew it.

Building an Empire Nobody Saw

While sourcing textiles in far-flung corners of the world, Iris built a parallel collection that defied every rule the fashion industry held sacred. She bought tribal jewelry in North African markets. She found couture jackets at Paris flea markets. She mixed $5 costume pieces with items worth thousands—and somehow, impossibly, it worked.

She stacked necklaces until they became sculpture. She wore Dior with department store finds. She chose colors that clashed on purpose because the clash told a story. Every morning, getting dressed was an act of creative rebellion.

And nobody noticed.

Not the fashion magazines. Not the style arbiters. Not the gatekeepers who decided what mattered and who didn’t. For decades, Iris dressed exactly as she pleased—bold, unapologetic, free—and the world looked right past her.

She was too old. Too unconventional. Too much.

When the Museum Called

Then came that phone call at 84.

A fashion historian had whispered about a woman in New York with an extraordinary collection. When another exhibition fell through at the last minute, a curator decided to investigate. What he found in Iris’s apartment defied belief: rooms filled with decades of fashion history, assembled not by a trained curator or wealthy collector, but by a woman with an instinctive, razor-sharp eye and zero interest in playing by the rules.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art asked to exhibit her personal wardrobe. Not a designer’s collection. Not a historical archive. Her closet.

Overnight, this octogenarian with oversized black glasses, snow-white hair, and signature red lipstick was everywhere. Suddenly, a woman in her eighties was commanding more attention than supermodels a third her age.

The fashion industry didn’t know what to make of her.

Here was someone who hadn’t chased their approval, hadn’t followed their trends, hadn’t begged for their validation. She’d simply lived with complete creative freedom for eight decades, and now they couldn’t look away.

Fashion vs. Style

Iris made the distinction crystal clear:

Fashion you can buy. Style you possess. The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. There’s no how-to road map to style. It’s about self-expression and attitude.

As for beauty? She dismissed it entirely. She said she wasn’t pretty and never would be. But pretty was beside the point. She had something far more powerful: presence. Conviction. An absolute refusal to apologize for taking up space.

She had style.

More Is More

Her philosophy could be distilled into four words that became her battle cry: More is more.

She stacked bangles until her wrists groaned under the weight. She layered beads, feathers, textures that should have overwhelmed her tiny frame but instead created a bold, graphic presence that demanded attention. Her signature phrase challenged every minimalist trend:

More is more and less is a bore.

Here are more quotes from Iris:

You have to try it. You only have one trip and you’ve got to remember that.

When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else.

Great personal style is an extreme curiosity about yourself.

If your hair is done properly and you have on good shoes, you can get away with anything.

I never expect people to agree with me. I just say what I think.

Style is attitude, attitude, attitude.

Color can raise the dead.

After the Met exhibition, fame didn’t just arrive—it exploded. At 93, she was the subject of a documentary. At 97, she signed her first modeling contract. Well into her second century, she collaborated with major fashion brands, appeared in campaigns, and amassed nearly three million Instagram followers.

When someone asked what else there was to do besides work at 100, she gave a characteristically sharp response: “I don’t play golf. I don’t play bridge.” She worked because she loved it. Retirement, she said, was “a fate worse than death.”

Love That Lasted

Through it all stood Carl. They married in 1948 and were partners for 67 years before he died in 2015 at age 100. They never had children—their work demanded constant travel, and Iris refused to let someone else raise them. But her influence reached millions anyway.

Young people found permission to dress boldly. Older people found permission to refuse invisibility. Women found permission to take up space without apology. Men discovered that style transcends gender. Everyone learned that conformity is overrated.

A Legacy Beyond Fashion

Iris Apfel lived to 102. She died on March 1, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida.

For most of her life, she heard the same narrow definitions: what beauty should look like, how women should dress, when people should retire, why older women should disappear. The world told her to be smaller, quieter, less.

She spent her final decades proving something the world desperately needed to hear:

Creativity doesn’t expire. Beauty isn’t confined to youth or conventional standards. The most radical act is refusing to diminish yourself for anyone else’s comfort. And sometimes, the best years come when you stop waiting for permission and start living like you mean it.

The Metropolitan Museum didn’t discover Iris Apfel at 84. They finally noticed what she’d been all along.

Iris Apfel became exactly what she had always been: Completely. Unapologetically. Magnificently. Herself.