by In 2018, she published “Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon,” an autobiographical collection of reflections, anecdotes and observations on life and style. When she turned 97 in 2019, she signed a modeling contract with the global agency IMG.
Iris Barrel was born on August 29, 1921 in Astoria, Queens, the only child of Samuel Barrel, owner of a glass and mirror business, and his Russian wife, Sadye, owner of a fashion boutique. Iris studied art history at New York University and art at the University of Wisconsin, worked for Women’s Wear Daily, and apprenticed with interior designer Elinor Johnson before opening her own design firm.
She married Carl Apfel, an advertising executive, in 1948. They had no children. Her husband died in 2015 at the age of 100.
His Old World Weavers had restored curtains, furniture, draperies and other fabrics in the White House for nine presidents, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.
Apfel’s apartments in New York and Palm Beach were filled with furniture and knick-knacks that could have come out of a Luis Buñuel movie: porcelain cats, stuffed toys, statues, ornate vases, gilded mirrors, fake fruit, stuffed parrots, paintings. by Velázquez and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a mannequin on an ostrich.
Fashion designer Duro Olowu told The Guardian in 2010 that Apfel’s work had a universal quality. “It’s not a trend,” he said. “It attracts a certain type of joy in everyone.”
