(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . New Day Cafe: RIP Iris Apfel [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-03-14 Welcome to the New Day Cafe! This is an open thread. Last week designer, philanthropist, and noted style figure Iris Apfel passed away at 102. Here's a brief look at her life and at the looks that got her a show in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. From her obituary in the NYT: www.nytimes.com/... “Calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles: a boxy, multicolored Bill Blass jacket with tinted Hopi dancing skirt and hairy goatskin boots; a fluffy evening coat of red and green rooster feathers with suede pants slashed to the knees; a rose angora sweater set and 19th-century Chinese brocade panel skirt. Her willfully disjunctive accessories might be a jeweled mask or a necklace of jade beads swinging to the knees, a tin handbag shaped like a terrier, furry scarves wrapped around her neck like a pile of pythons and, nearly always, her signature armloads of bangles and owlish spectacles, big as saucers. She was tallish and thin, with a short crop of silver hair and scarlet gashes on lips and fingernails, a little old lady among the models at Fashion Week and an authentic Noo Yawk haggler at a shop in Harlem or a souk in Tunisia. Many called her gaudy, kooky, bizarre, even vulgar in get-ups like a cape of gold-tipped duck feathers and thigh-high fuchsia satin Yves Saint Laurent boots. But she had a point. ‘When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else,’ Ms. Apfel told Ruth La Ferla of The New York Times in 2011 as she was about to go on national television, selling scarves, bangles and beads of her own design on the Home Shopping Network.” Iris and Carl Apfel had become financially successful thanks to their company Old World Weavers: www.theinside.com/... “Iris and her husband Carl, who she married in 1948, traveled all over the world attending international flea markets and bazaars to source furniture and rare fabrics for personal inspiration as well as design projects. But with such a high demand for these treasured fabrics, sourcing them for large-scale projects became close to impossible. This inspired the duo to found Old World Weavers in 1950, in order to replicate the magnificent historic fabrics found on their travels, from European flea markets to North African souks. Old World Weavers became a runaway success, known (then and now) for its blend of sophisticated historical design, and an exotic, world-travelled aesthetic. Iris brought her overseas inspiration to life through many high-profile projects, including the White House under nine presidents, the State Department, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and with clients Estee Lauder, Greta Garbo and Faye Dunaway.” The Apfels sold the company in 1992 and stayed on until 2005. A few of Ms. Apfel’s legendary outfits: This is an open thread. Please join us. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/14/2228438/-New-Day-Cafe-RIP-Iris-Apfel?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/