Fashion icon Iris Apfel turns 100

The Jewish world’s oldest fashion icon turned 100 last week and showed no sign of slowing down, having signed as a model three years ago at the age of 97.

Iris Apfel, whose early career as an interior designer to presidents later morphed into fashion design, worked with her husband Carl for 68 years until his death at the age of 100 in 2015.

She ran a textile firm with him from 1950 to 1992, specialising in fabric reproductions from the past four centuries, with which she took part in design work at the White House for nine presidents, beginning with Truman and ending with Clinton.

Born in Queens, New York, on 29 August 1921 to a Russian-Jewish mother and Jewish glassmaker father, she worked in her parents’ fashion boutique before studying art and marrying Carl during the Second World War.

In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art ran an exhibition of her designs, triggering a busy later life in which she has launched a jewellery start-up, published a biography, attracted 1.7 million Instagram followers, and signed as a model for international agency IMG in 2019.