by Iris Apfel
I needed a lot of clothes for the job—for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and for everything in between. There was a story to be found 24/7. My deft assemblage of these little numbers resulted in compliments and I became known for putting together a good look or two. This was very flattering, as I didn’t have a lot of money, let alone a clothing allowance from the resort, so I had to mix and match. But guests took notice, and it was through those conversations I’d let slip my interest and experience in interior design, which in turn, led to work.
Since I didn’t have a body of work or references, guests must have figured that if I could put together an outfit, I could probably do the same for a room. Suddenly people looking to renovate the interiors of their homes approached me to do the job, with seemingly inherent faith that I could. I got some very good clients this way and decided to start a business.
My clients didn’t have run-of-the-mill taste, which suited me just fine, as I don’t believe that one style fits all, anyway. I would find out as much as I could about their interests, style, and taste, and if they couldn’t articulate these things, I riffed off of what I did know about them in every applicable sense to create an interior that expressed their aesthetic. Then there were those who didn’t like working with me because I never drew up designs of what I was planning to create for them; I just dove right in. Sometimes it was difficult, especially when clients were very rigid about what they wanted. With most of them, though, I would eventually get carte blanche—or at least partial carte blanche—to design their interiors as I saw fit. I was left to improvise, which suited me just fine. All roads lead back to jazz.
Love and Marriage
I WAS MARRIED for sixty-eight years. That is a long time to be together. Sometimes it felt like a century, sometimes it felt like a nanosecond. We had a wonderful relationship; the hows, whys, and whens of it are too private and painful for me to relay at the moment, having recently lost my darling.
I met Carl Apfel very briefly while I was on a vacation at Lake George. A few weeks later, I had lunch at the Plaza with my mother and an old beau who was the buyer of haute couture for Neiman Marcus in Dallas. As he walked me back to my office that afternoon, we passed by Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue. We stopped for a while to talk about what caught our eye in the window.
That night, as I came home, the phone was ringing off the hook. It was Carl.
Photo Credit: Found Image Holdings/Corbis/Getty Images
“I loved the hat you were wearing today,” he said. Then he went on to compliment my wonderful suit, my bag, my shoes—the whole outfit. Then he asked me out.
I couldn’t figure it out at first, but then he explained he had been stuck on a bus that had broken down on Fifth Avenue in front of Bonwit Teller at the time I happened to be standing there.
We had a whirlwind courtship.
We had our first date on Columbus Day.
We got engaged on Thanksgiving Day.
I got blinged on Christmas Day.
We were married on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1948. I wore a strapless, pink lace dress. I sketched it, and a woman—a couturier whom my mother used to make special things—made the dress. It was fitted with a full skirt, and it had a little cape, which I wore for the wedding. I kept it to wear on formal occasions. I thought spending a lot of money on a wedding dress only to wear it once and put it in a box was pretty impractical.
We were married at the Waldorf Astoria. The ceremony was held there, with cocktails and dinner. It was a small affair, 120 people, but it was beautiful. And it was a pink wedding—I couldn’t have the decor clash with my dress!
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
THE SECRETS OF
A LONG and HAPPY MARRIAGE
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK ME what the secrets of a long and happy marriage are. I don’t know the secrets, but here are some things that come to mind.
1I list this first because it’s always what I seem to say first whenever anyone asks: have a sense of humor because that will get you through bad times and make good ones even better.
2Respect each other.
3Give each other space; don’t get in each other’s face all the time.
4Accept that you won’t always agree, but trying to stay more or less on the same wavelength is very productive.
5Don’t sacrifice who you are. And accept who your partner is. You may be a couple, but you are not one person.
6Don’t be petty. Most couples fight about stupid little things that they’ve blown out of proportion. And there’s nothing more annoying than nit-picking.
7Have a sense of adventure; do new things together.
8Accept that you won’t always like the same things and people.
9If you like to do something and your partner doesn’t, do your thing anyway! And once in a while, also do the thing your partner loves to do that you don’t.
10Be creative. Sharing new interests keeps a relationship fresh.
Photo Credit: Ernie Leyba/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Aladdin’s Cave
MY INTERIOR DESIGN BUSINESS was booming, and I was on my way to see a new client in Brooklyn. Her travel instructions left a great deal to be desired; to begin with, I got off at the wrong subway stop and walked straight into an unexpected rainstorm.
I was frantically trying to figure out where I was when I spied what I thought had to be a mirage: a long, slender store window with a beautiful Tiffany glass screen at one end, against which was draped an outfit by the great Norman Norell. I swooned and gasped. At the other end of the window was a mannequin magnificently dressed in Pauline Trigère.
Waterlogged and anxious, I entered the emporium, a cavernous room filled with clothing on pipe racks, women in various stages of undress scrambling about, and dozens of disgruntled husbands yapping at their wives to step on it.
I realized I had stumbled upon Loehmann’s, the legendary discount retailer. I snooped around the racks, saw nothing that pleased me, and wondered what all the fuss was about. I was about to leave, when another customer came to my rescue. She explained that I was in the low-end department and that if I were to go to the back of the store and walk up a flight of stairs, I would come to the exalted “back room.” I followed her instructions and fell into Aladdin’s cave: clothes by all the great fashion designers were hanging there in dizzying array.
The clothes were gorgeous, and the prices were incredibly low. I was dripping and drooling all at once. I had found the Holy Grail, but had neither the time nor the money on hand at that point, so I thanked the Lord for my good fortune and promised myself a return trip.
I quickly became a regular. Every time I went back to Brooklyn, I would stop by and pick up a few more pieces. Often, I had no time to try anything on as I was always running to meet a client. The store had a no-return policy then, but that never deterred me because, being a fabric freak, I figured I could always turn an oversize dress into some gorgeous pillows. The textiles were truly to die for!
Occasionally, Mrs. Loehmann would sit on a high stool on the selling floor to observe all that went on. A petite woman, she wore her hair in a topknot. She was always dressed in a high-button blouse, a long drawstring skirt, and high-button shoes—and she always carried her miser’s bag full of cash from bailing out the garmentos on Seventh Avenue. She reminded me of a character in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.
She often fixated on me as I sashayed about. One day, she summoned me over.
“I’ve been watching you, young lady,” said she. “You’re certainly no beauty, but you’ve got something much better—you have STYLE!”
I didn’t quite understand what she meant at the time, but her comment was a precursor of much to come.
When I was a little girl, I asked my father what he was going to give me for my birthday.
He replied, “Why should
I give you anything?”
“Because it is my birthday,” I stammered.
He retaliated, “I don’t have to give you anything. You had nothing to do with being born!”
Photo Credit: Macy's Merchandising Group Marketing & Creative Services in partnership with Snaps Media Inc.
Concentration
SIX NOT-SO-EASY PIECES
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME about the genesis of my passion for fabric. For a long time, I couldn’t pinpoint a moment. But then one day I had a flashback to my early childhood—and all was revealed.
I was an only child and for many years the only grandchild on both sides of my family. This meant I often attended family events that kids didn’t go to. We lived in Queens, and periodically, my parents would take me to my father’s parents’ home in Brooklyn, where all the aunts and uncles would gather for a social evening. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, everyone would pet me, pinch my cheek, and ask me questions. Then they’d get bored with me and go and have a drink or play cards; I’d be left standing there like a little fool.
Photo Credit: Art Department: © 2017 Carlos Aponte/Illustration Division
My grandmother realized she had to do something to keep me entertained. She was a very charitable woman who did a lot of work for the poor and the sick. In those days, she was one of the founders of a hospital and an old-age home. She also had four daughters; they were always sewing for charity.
One time, when I was still very young, she took me to a back hallway where there were two big closets, and said, “Sit on the floor. I’m going to give you a treat.”
I obeyed. She opened the closet doors, and out tumbled several huge white sacks that had been stuffed inside. She opened one bag, and then another, and what I saw made my eyes pop: a gigantic bunch of little fabric remnants in all sorts of colors and patterns—there were scraps of all kinds, of all shapes and sizes.
Then she said, “Here, sit on the floor and play with them. Do whatever you want. If you’re good, you can take six pieces with you when you go home.”
I was fascinated, and this became the routine whenever I went to visit. I would sit on the floor in the back hall and put combinations together. If I didn’t like a setup, I’d “fix” it. I clearly remember agonizing over a change, especially if I thought I wanted to pull a swatch from one of my “finished” arrangements to put into another, newer one, because then it meant I’d have to fix that, too. Obsessed with texture, color, and pattern, I spent whole evenings entertaining myself this way. Time always passed too quickly, and I was always sad to leave when my grandmother came to fetch me. Looking back, it’s very clear playing this way honed my eye and gave me a very deep interest in fabric.
Photo Credit: Art Department: © 2017 Carlos Aponte/Illustration Division
The Duke to the Rescue
Photo Credit: Sony Music Archives
I’VE BEEN A JAZZ BUFF for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I had two classmates who used to work for an advertising agency that sponsored the 1930s NBC radio program Let’s Dance. Benny Goodman’s band was a big part of the show—and he was all the rage. These boys made themselves a pile of money because they took a bunch of tickets they were supposed to send out to the sponsors and the sponsors’ friends and they kept them to sell instead. We all bought the tickets because we were all dying to hear Benny Goodman play. There was a whole contingent of us from William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City, who went every week to hear him. We used to go crazy. We used to dance in the aisles in our saddle shoes. It was really fun.
Photo Credit: Sony Music Archives
When I was in college, I transferred from New York University to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and I found myself painfully shy of a few credits that were lost in the transfer, credits I needed to fulfill my curriculum and graduate.
I had read the course selections backward and forward, trying to find something interesting that I hadn’t already taken at NYU. To make a long story short, I found a course called Museum Administrations I.
My first task was to find the professor and the building where the class was held. It was no easy matter. The building was way across campus and no classes were held there. When I finally located the room, I knocked on the door, and was told to enter by a very surprised, tiny, elderly gentleman. He wanted to know why I was there; it seemed I was the very first creature to sign up for his class in eight years! He had all but given up hope for students, patiently waiting to retire instead. When I asked what the course was about, he said whatever I wanted it to be. And somewhere in all of that, he explained his yearning to found a museum of indigenous American culture.
“What about something on jazz?” said I.
“Brilliant!” said he.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“What about writing a paper?”
“Brilliant!” I retorted and merrily skipped off to the library only to be stonewalled again. There was not one word written on the subject to be found there.
After agonizing over my problem for weeks, as well as the notion of spending the rest of my life on campus, a piece of good fortune came my way. I read in the newspaper that Duke Ellington and his band were coming to town to play at a local movie theater between film showings.
Photo Credit: Sony Music Archives
Aha! I thought to myself, I will go to the source.
I put on gray flannel trousers, a gray cashmere sweater, a Cornell blazer—a stunning white flannel jacket with burgundy piping and beautiful buttons that an old beau had given to me—and a great pair of loafers and headed down to the theater instead of my usual classes.
I snuck backstage and knocked on the dressing-room door. Ray Nance, a violinist in the band, opened the door, and looked me over.
“Lordy, lordy, who’s your tailor? What can we do for you?”
He invited me in and upon hearing my mission, told me to wait for the Duke to finish his set.
When the Duke came back to the dressing room, I was bowled over. He was charming, and to this day is still one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. He was suave, sophisticated, and elegant. We spent the rest of that afternoon together; the Duke regaled me with jazz tales galore. He told me that his band was going to be in Madison for the week and that I could come back whenever I wanted to. He gave me loads of information: We talked about different musicians, their work, their style. We talked about different movements within the jazz genre. The fact that he took so much time to speak with me was extraordinary. Needless to say, my classroom seats were empty that week.
Photo Credit: Sony Music Archives
At the end of the seven days, the Duke announced that he and his band were planning to take the milk train to Chicago’s South Side, where they would play at a theater for two weeks. All the jazz greats and his friends who were anywhere in the area were going to stop by. He told me he’d be delighted if I would come, and he’d introduce me to them all. That was just about the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard.
On the last night, the band never went back to the hotel. In 1940, Madison was the most awful place when it came to race. African-American people had to stay in a rathole of a hotel. When Paul Robeson, the actor and great singer, came to town, the college set up a bed at the student hall for him because the hotel was so terrible. So I understood what was meant when band members said they were going to wait for the milk train after the last show.
That last night, we were walking down the street when street cleaning began. Billy Strayhorn, a great with the Ellington organization—but also a depressive—was very drunk. He started throwing all of his sheet music into the street, where it literally began going down the drains. We all ran around, trying to catch the pages. A lot of it just perished.
I had to clear a hurdle to get to Chicago—my mother. She had to grant permission for me to leave the sorority house where I was living. PERMISSION DENIED.
I chose to go anyway. In Chicago, I met the musicians Duke told me
about. Not only did they come to watch him play, they sat in with him for some great live jam sessions. And I was able to speak with them for my paper. Problem solved.
Henri Matisse, The Snail, 1953
Photo Credit: © 2017 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph: © Tate, London/Art Resource, NY
Matisse et Moi
Photo Credit: Keith Major
WHEN THE TATE MODERN curators created the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs in 2014, they asked me to do a video that would be part of the show. They wanted me to talk about the similarities between Matisse’s work and the way I dress. Honestly, I had never thought about that before—but I thought it would be fun, and when I started to choose clothing for the shoot, I realized that it was true. A number of my clothes look very . . . Matisse-y.
For the video, I was filmed paging through the show catalog and talking about the pieces from my closet that I thought complemented the cutouts. One cutout I chose, The Snail, appealed to me because of its subdued, yet brightly colored squares. Their tonality allows them to blend beautifully. If the work were a piece of clothing, it would be a great example of color blocking. So I put together a color-blocked outfit: I wore vivid multicolored bracelets and a colorful multi-tiered necklace along with a bright-orange vintage cape. That floor-length cape with a high, curving collar was also as heavy as a horse blanket, but as I said at the time, “We have to suffer for our art.”