by Iris Apfel
The Horse, the Rider and the Clown, with its intense color, brought to mind a white Gianni Versace trouser-and-jacket combination. And as a self-professed jazz freak, I was delighted to discover that the work comes from his Jazz portfolio. I’m so happy to have a love of music and color in common with Monsieur Matisse.
When Matisse made this work, he was ill and could no longer sculpt, yet in the catalog he is described as carving through color. What a wonderful image. I like to imagine him thinking of his scissors as a sculpting tool, carving through color blocks or maybe, like a scythe, cutting through huge fields of magnificent color.
ON COLOR
A PERSONAL MANIFESTO
Personally, I can’t live without COLOR.
In the proper tonality, I’ve never met a COLOR I didn’t like.
I’ve always said that the world today is so gray that we need COLOR more than ever.
COLOR is a living, breathing thing.
And let’s face it, life can be dull; you might as well have a little fun with COLOR when you dress.
I wear red lipstick
because I like it and I think it’s becoming on me. Matisse once said, “A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful,” and Man Ray likened wearing red lipstick to the “dash and dignity of a courageous heart,” which sums it up perfectly. Red lipstick is minimal in its simplicity and elegance, but maximal in its impact, power, and glamour. If Minimal and Maximal had a baby, it would be the perfect red lipstick.
Photo Credit: Donald Robertson
Whatever happened
to mystery and glamour and all that good stuff?
Photo Credit: Norman Nelson
Your Smartphone Is Not Your Brain
IF YOU DON’T use your legs, you won’t be able to walk. If you don’t use your brain, you won’t be able to do anything. This whole technology obsession is giving rise to a generation of zombies. But it’s not just that—people aren’t connecting with one another. People go out on a date: they sit across from each other, and instead of talking, they’re texting.
Technology is wonderful for medicine, for engineering, for all those kinds of things. But on a human level, it’s disastrous. People use smartphones and computers as a crutch. Technology has ruined a whole generation of young people. It has robbed kids of their childhood. They have become button pressers. They think if they press a button, they’re very curious. That’s not curiosity or imagination—that’s just access to a world created for them.
So many basic human capabilities have gone out the window. The three Rs—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic—aren’t enforced in school, either, so young people can’t read, write, or add two and two. No one’s developing memory, because their phones remember and do everything for them. I’m fairly good at remembering telephone numbers, which I always thought was a pretty common skill, but today it seems to stun people almost every time I make call.
My mother died in 1998, four weeks after her hundredth birthday. From about the time Carl and I were married to not so long before she died—about fifty years—he would give her an adding machine every year, and she would always send it back.
He would say, “Why do you do that? I’m trying to help you.”
And she’d say, “No, it’s no help. If I use an adding machine, I’ll lose it. I won’t be able to add anymore.”
She could do really big, big sums in her head well into her later years.
At first, everyone said I was an old fogy when I proffered my thoughts on the subject. But now there are “phone-free” get-togethers at which people have to give up their phone for the course of a meal and “tech-free” times when families go cold turkey on tech for an evening or, God forbid, a whole day.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
Photo Credit: Halfpoint/Shutterstock
The Fame Game
THE CULT OF CELEBRITY (a word I hate), is a sad commentary on our society. It’s almost like as fast as technology evolves, the human race devolves. Reality shows are dreadful and allow people to live in someone else’s image. You can turn on your phone and follow a famous person’s life almost to the extent that you are living it. Whatever happened to the cultivation of an inner self? It’s painful and it’s work, but it always pays off.
The obsession with the superficial reminds me of all the young ladies I went to school with who were pretty—the girls who had perfect hair, the ones who dated the football players, the prom queens. Because they were pretty, they relied totally on their looks to get along. And they didn’t grow in any other way, unlike girls who looked like me, who realized they had to develop themselves in other ways to get along in the world.
To be known and admired for giving something to the planet or helping people is one thing, but for me, that’s where the intrigue with fame ends. Being famous just for being famous is ridiculous; it doesn’t make a person memorable or interesting. I’ve met celebrities and have forgotten them just as fast as hello because they had nothing much to say. There are a lot of people who are memorable to me for any number of reasons—humor, intelligence, the way they always tell a good story—and it doesn’t matter to me if anyone else knows who they are.
Privacy is a precious commodity and when you’re famous, it becomes elusive. And if you start looking outside yourself for validation, you’re really in trouble.
I didn’t look for recognition. People come to me to do projects and if what they’re asking me to do is new or sounds fun or creative, I’m in. It’s all about the work for me. I like to work, to do new things. If people are interested in my style, amused by my candor, or amazed by the fact that I’m still out there hoofing it in my mid-nineties, that’s great, but I never had any intention of becoming a role model on aging. I believe we are put on this earth to do something. If you stop using your brain at any age, it is going to atrophy and eventually stop working. It’s harder when you get older, but you just have to do it. Why curl up in a ball and wait to die?
I’ve become increasingly recognized in the years since Rara Avis, through the press and all that. But Iris, the documentary Albert Maysles made about me, pushed the public recognition into another sphere altogether when it was released in 2015. At first, I wasn’t going to do it; I didn’t really want a film crew dragging around behind me, and I couldn’t really see what would be so intriguing about my life, if you want to know the truth. But eventually, my very good friend, Linda Fargo, one of New York City’s leading lights in fashion, convinced me I’d be a fool not to do it, and I let Albert in, because even though I only met him at the beginning of the film, we just hit it off. He never got in my hair and we filmed on and off for four years. While the film is about me and shopping and style and all that, it’s become more significant to me for another reason. Many people have told me that they see Iris as a love story about Carl and me. And it is. But really, it is a dual love story—a story of my love and passion for Carl and for my work.
I was shocked when Albert passed away in March, just a month before Iris was released; he had never let on that he was sick while we were working together. A few months later, Carl died just days before his 101st birthday. I’m glad, now that he’s gone, that we did the film; it was about passion on many levels, and that’s what’s important to me.
Photo Credit: Kelsey Bennett
I AM AFRAID OF:
Things I cannot control, like lightning. It drives me under the bed.
Slimy, slithering snakes and other sludgy creatures.
Technological labor-saving devices. I can operate nary a one. I’m convinced they are always out to get me.
Photo Credit: AF Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
Optically Speaking
Photo Credit: Nick Stocks
PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK me how many pairs I have of the oversized glasses that I wear. Honestly, I don’t count them. I probably have three or four pairs that I wear all the time and a few others for special outfits.
I’ve loved looking for junk at flea markets ever since I was a
kid. And for some reason, unusual spectacle frames have always fascinated me. Whenever I saw unique ones, I would buy them and put them in an old shoebox of my mother’s that I kept in my closet.
Once in a while, I’d take them out and try them on. They were so much fun. I didn’t need glasses then, but sometimes I’d just wear the frames without the lenses because I thought they were a great fashion accessory.
Many years later, when I was much older and truly needed them, I thought, Well, if I’m going to have to wear glasses, I might as well have GLASSES. So I took out the biggest pair I had, and I had lenses put into them.
Why do I wear such large glasses?
Photo Credit: Nick Stocks
The bigger to see you with, my dear.
Photo Credit: Nick Stocks
Anyway, you have to have fun. If you can’t have fun, you might as well be dead.
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
BY THE LATE 1940s, my interior-decorating business had taken off. One day, while working on this beautiful home on Long Island, I was looking for fabric, well, to be exact, a vision of a fabric I had conjured up in my head—but I was sure it had to exist in a showroom in New York City. I wanted that fabric and I couldn’t find it. It didn’t exist. I was going absolutely mad.
As luck would have it, I ran into a young woman I had gone to school with. She was working for a fabric wholesaler, so I asked her if she knew where I might find the fabric I imagined. She said she didn’t know, but if I wanted something special, perhaps I might want to go see her father. As it turned out, her father was reputed to be a textile genius. He had come to America from southern Italy with a few handlooms and set them up in Paterson, New Jersey, where he sold the wondrous fabrics he produced. Eventually, he opened a little mill in Long Island City and worked for fabric wholesalers like Scalamandré, Lee Jofa, and Schumacher.
I went to see Papa and told him about the fabric I was after. He told me to come back with the design I was talking about, and if he liked it, he’d make it. He had the ability to make a few yards of a fabric at a time, too, which was a real advantage; most people wouldn’t make such a small quantity of something special because it’s so expensive. He brought to fruition the fabric of my dreams, and it was a big success. Not long after, he asked me if I had any more designs, and we began to make some textiles together. I used them for my business and he sold them, too.
One day, he brought up the idea of going into business together: he’d run the mill, I’d do the designing, and Carl would sell and handle the business end of things. Carl and I thought it was a good idea, but we were concerned about how we were going to do it. We didn’t have a load of money. We needed to make a living. At the time, Carl was in business with his father.
We decided we would test the market first. In those days, interior designers were mostly staffed professional businesses, not an individual with some helping hands, like it is today. We made a few samples, and Carl made appointments with designers during his lunch hour. The response was positive, so we made more and more samples.
Finally, we had so many samples that we had to put them in a suitcase, but it quickly filled up and became so heavy that Carl couldn’t carry it. So he put wheels on it—he was the first one to do that. If he had patented that roll-along suitcase invention maybe we wouldn’t have had to do anything else for the rest of our lives. But whenever I said that, he always responded, “Don’t worry—think of all the fun we would have missed.”
We had many, many samples because every time Papa did an order, he’d take a piece and give it to me. One day, the suitcase was nearing the brink: bulging with samples, it was almost impossible to close, especially because one of the main fillers was a heavy antique taffeta with satin backing. That’s when I had the idea to make a color blanket. I took all the samples to the mill, laid them out, and graded them, using about twelve inches of each color so they looked harmonious.
One day after months of trying, we finally got an appointment with Dorothy Draper, the doyenne of decorators at the time. The morning of the meeting, as luck would have it, that special blanket sample came in from the mill. Carl threw the blanket on the top of the other fabrics in his suitcase and set off.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
When Carl was ushered in to meet with Mrs. Draper, a very large woman, she was standing behind an enormous trestle table, which she used as a desk.
She looked at Carl and said, “Well, young man, what have you got to show me?”
He opened the suitcase and with a great, dramatic flourish, threw the sample blanket across the table.
She gasped and said, “Oh my God, you know, this is the first intelligently scaled stripe I have ever seen.”
She thought it was a striped fabric. Well, Carl didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t. She wanted to order three hundred yards.
The next day, we had a visit from Sara Fredericks. She sold beautiful designer clothes in her shops in New York, Boston, and Palm Beach—and she was well known for her impeccable taste and love of luxury. Sara had heard of us through an antiques dealer we both knew and she called to ask if she could come to our apartment after business hours. In the end, she placed an order for 250 yards of another design. We figured if these decorating and fashion mavens thought we were good enough for them, we should give going into business a crack.
We opened Old World Weavers in 1951.
In those days, it was very difficult to get into our part of the fabric business, so we had to be inventive. Eventually our persistence paid off. We began by doing small custom work for clients. We made everything to order because we couldn’t afford to hold any inventory. One job led to another, and things worked out beautifully for the first couple of years. But as labor unions entered fabric production, it became more difficult to do small quantities affordably.
It was time to switch gears.
In 1953, we traveled to Europe to see if we could find special fabrics to replicate. When I want something, I’m relentless, so we went absolutely everywhere. We found brochés, brocades, brocatelles—all kinds of wonderful hand-woven creations. Not only did we look for special fabrics, but we also needed to find the mills that had the ability to replicate them authentically.
A lot of manufacturers we wanted to meet with would literally shut the door in our faces because we weren’t looking for large-enough quantities; what we needed amounted to sample sizes as far as they were concerned. To make matters worse, French war hero Captain Roger E. Brunschwig was already in business with the bulk of the mills in France. But we were persistent, and we finally got our foot in the door. We then tried our luck in Italy, where we had great success.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iris Apfel
I liked to say our collection of fabrics was the most dazzling one going. Eventually, we began to travel to Europe twice a year, simply because there were fabrics there that we couldn’t get elsewhere.
We specialized in replicating as closely as possible fabrics from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. I never did an adaptation; I always tried to make designs that looked old and different. That’s what led us all over the world: Sometimes we met with museum curators who would open the doors to their collections to help us find what we were looking for. After finding old documents that supported my designs, I would search out the mill that would be able to produce it.
I learned how to spot the right textiles at markets by doing. I don’t think you can learn how to do it from a book. It takes practice, and I believe in apprenticing and honing your eye. It’s hard work and it takes years. It’s like being a good cook who doesn’t work from a recipe but who just knows what ingredients to put in. Anyway, there’s no free lunch. That’s what I learned.
Eventually, we opened a showroom on the top floor of a four-story walkup, a townhouse at 115 East Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan, right in the heart of
the prime antiques district. Socialites would find out about us and come to the showroom, a space that was styled like a French salon; shortly thereafter, they started sending their decorators our way. We worked with top designers, decorators, and architects with a very prestigious clientele including Greta Garbo, Estée Lauder, Montgomery Clift, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and Joan Rivers, just to mention a few of the boldface names who started coming to our townhouse. We showed samples out of an armoire, but when got bigger, we displayed our wares on racks. That spoiled the salon look, but it also meant that business was booming. I couldn’t argue with that.
Photo Credit: John M. Hall; interior photo courtesy of Iris Apfel
Photo Credit: John M. Hall
Photo Credit: John M. Hall
Photo Credit: John M. Hall; interior photo courtesy of Iris Apfel
Shoot from the Hip
Photo Credit: Art Department: © 2017 Carlos Aponte/Illustration Division
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS I loved about Carl that if I were to list them all, they wouldn’t fit in these pages. He was hysterically funny. He had the most delicious, off-beat sense of humor. We used to laugh a lot.
When Carl and I ran Old World Weavers, I used to make clothes for myself using sample lengths of fabric. After a few years, I decided to do something for him, so I had a bunch of spiffy pants made out of our upholstery, too. Some pants were sporty, wild prints, while others were formal and elegant, suitable for gala events. People would admire his trousers, invariably asking where he got them.