A Spectacle in Glasses

Iris Apfel’s emergence into mainstream consciousness happened fashionably late. In 2005, the Costume Institute staged Rara Avis, a now cultish exhibition of her clothes and accessories, from Dior haute couture, flea-market finds, 19th-century ecclesiastical vestments and Dolce & Gabbana lizard trousers. She was 84. Few people (if any) have ever captured the world’s eye in their eighties with such panache. She playfully gave herself the title ‘geriatric starlet’.

In contemporary Western popular culture, when reaching old age, a woman is generally seen as being an even greater bother than when she was young. She is to be treated with suspicion (the witch), pity (the vulnerable widow) or revulsion (the hag). The only old-woman trope that has a positive inflection is the grandma. But, however well-intentioned, this stereotype comes with its own heap of condescension: she’s dour or twinkly-eyed, hemmed in by her quiet domesticity. Perhaps the rare ‘wise old sage’ sub-category offers a glimmer of hope, but (particularly when this character happens to be female) there’s a sprinkling of wariness mixed in, and we’re back to square one.

More pervasive and grating than all of these stereotypes is the thought that a woman should naturally age into invisibility. ‘Marginalisation is achieved by pushing [old women] into social nonexistence; they are often financially impoverished and stripped of any influence,’ wrote Olga Tokarczuk in the introduction of Leonora Carrington’s 1974 novel The Hearing Trumpet (itself focused on themes of ageing and eccentricity).‘They become, instead, inferior creatures of no concern whatsoever to others; society does little more than tolerate them and provide them (rather reluctantly) with some sort of care.’ As we age, we are expected to wear less neon, prioritise comfort, go to bed early.

In the early 2000s, we found something new, undefinable and loud in Mrs Apfel. An old, childless, glamorous idiosyncrasy, who flew on to the scene and carried the baton of a ‘true American original’ in her manicured talons until she was 102, before finally, elegantly, taking off again on 1 March 2024. She became known for her satirical textures, her pebble necklaces, her acerbic wit, her way with colours and her layers – most of them worn all at once. We didn’t know what box to put her in. She was neither witch nor hag; she wasn’t vulnerable, and she certainly wasn’t invisible. So we called her ‘eccentric’. ‘The way I dress may be “different” or eccentric to some who feel the need to label but that’s no concern to me,’ Apfel once said. Nonetheless, these labels followed her around like a billowing cape in a gathering wind: the word ‘eccentric’ cropped up frequently in the titles of myriad recent obituaries.

Unlike many women cast as oddballs (for example Edie Beale or Vivian Maier), Mrs Apfel was recognised and adored globally within her lifetime, as her 3.1 million Instagram followers would attest. The only tag she seemed to embrace was ‘accidental icon’, which was the title of her 2018 biography. ‘Mrs Apfel was an irascible peacock, deadpan in her responses, and entirely without concern about what anybody thought of her, her opinions, or her drama-queen wardrobe – but she certainly seemed to enjoy, with a bit of amused puzzlement, the world flocking to her door,’ says Mitchell Owens, who interviewed her for Architectural Digest magazine in 2011, having first met her in New York in the 1990s, when she was already ‘a personage’. ‘I adored her body language,’ Mitch adds, ‘insinuating and seductive in one-on-one conversation, explosive in her reactions (the starfish hands, the agog mouth), a sort of divine sense of comedy and drama.’ She was a bespectacled spectacle.

It is said that we become more eccentric as we age, but perhaps we just have had more years to get to know ourselves, and can express that more openly. Apfel’s style was not some peculiarity that arose with age but rather a singular aesthetic sensibility honed over many years. Her colours continued to get more experimental and vibrant as she got older; her style evolved well into her centenary, at an age when it would traditionally have stood still. She refused to succumb to the identity shift of age, in spite of society’s insistence to push older women to become more limited versions of themselves. Her injection into the mainstream may have been swift, but only after a long and exceptional career in decorating. She had a wildly successful, if often overlooked, life in interiors, alongside her husband, Carl, whom she married in 1948. Together they travelled round the world, sourcing furniture and rare fabrics for personal inspiration as well as design projects, which quickly become hot property. They founded Old World Weavers in 1950, with a mission to replicate the magnificent and rare historic fabrics found on their travels and to make them available for broader consumption. While satiating a US market hungry for such exotica, Apfel caught the eye of the highest office in the land. Her contract with the White House lasted nine presidencies. It was a world away from playing with scraps of fabric as a child in Queens, New York, and being paid $15 a week as a copy girl at Fairchild Fashion Media, where she learned her industry’s craft by ferrying messages between editors up and down stairs.

Apfel is proof that being in your own lane is not the same as being away with the fairies – that’s a misconception that has plagued women through history. Apfel was an astute businesswoman, recognised by establishments such as the Costume Institute and the White House. But most of all, she was heard and seen by the masses. And her late passage into fame and adoration, which she managed with such vibrancy and vision, was arguably her greatest quirk.

Marginalised people are often forced into the vanishing centre because that’s where it’s safest, like water circling a drain, at once cushioned and encased by concentric waves of fear and other barriers. To escape this is like swimming against the tide. Apfel believed that the greatest style advice she could give was to ‘work at it’, dispelling the myth that taste is something a lucky few are born with, or can afford, while the rest of us muddle around in ‘lower’ pursuits, like fashion or trends. For Apfel, style was a ‘painful’ evolution, a slow turning into oneself. It takes courage to be eccentric, but also commitment. ‘The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years,’ she said. Apfel’s age-defying, trope-busting beauty is a glorious example of society’s ability to accept difference when it is pushed to do so. If you refuse to go to the centre, the centre might just come to you.