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In 2018, she published “Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon,” an autobiographical collection of musings, anecdotes and observations on life and style. As she turned 97 in 2019, she signed a modeling contract with the global agency IMG.
Iris Barrel was born on Aug. 29, 1921, in Astoria, Queens, the only child of Samuel Barrel, who owned a glass and mirror business, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, who owned a fashion boutique. Iris studied art history at New York University and art at the University of Wisconsin, worked for Women’s Wear Daily, apprenticed with the interior designer Elinor Johnson, and opened 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.
Their Old World Weavers had restored curtains, furniture, draperies and other fabrics at the White House for nine presidents, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.
Ms. Apfel’s apartments in New York and Palm Beach were full of furnishings and tchotchkes that might have come from a Luis Buñuel film: porcelain cats, plush toys, statuary, ornate vases, gilt mirrors, fake fruit, stuffed parrots, paintings by Velázquez and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a mannequin on an ostrich.
The fashion designer Duro Olowu told The Guardian in 2010 that Ms. Apfel’s work had a universal quality. “It’s not a trend,” he said. “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everybody.”
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