Iris Apfel died exactly 102.5 years old – the oldest model in the world will be missing

It was an early course in sustainability, which was important to her until the end. She bought what she liked, vintage, at the market, from the store or from a designer – “I have a black belt in shopping,” she once said. – and if yes. If something turned out to be a bad purchase, the fabric was reworked into pillowcases and other decorative items. She kept many things for decades, and she cherished and wore her wedding shoes for the rest of her life. By the way, her wedding dress was not white, but pink; she wanted to be able to wear it again later.

Carl also grew old, he was 100 when he died in 2015. The two were happily together for 67 years, retiring in 1992 with a somewhat eventful retirement. Of course, they had become wealthy together and had an apartment on Park Avenue in New York. At the age of 100, Carl still called Iris “my child bride,” and Iris called Carl “my little kitten.” She described her fascination with him in 1948: “I thought to myself: he’s cool, he’s cuddly and he cooks Chinese, nothing better could have happened to me.”

She had studied art, she had worked at a fashion magazine, she had traveled the world with Carl and decorated countless apartments, houses and villas – she had the perfect eye and he always had a toolbox with him so he could take pictures of her clients could also hang it wherever Iris wanted.

And then everything became completely different again. In 2005, a costume exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was canceled. The curator asked Iris Apfel if she would please exhibit a fraction of her wardrobe and jewelry from decades. She agreed, and the exhibition and the woman behind it became a hit. And not (only) among the elderly, but especially among young people.

It was the time when fashion blogs and street photography became big and originality suddenly became as important as tailor-made beauty. And there was no more original fashion icon than Iris Apfel, the woman who had never considered herself beautiful all her life, but was not bothered by it: style came before beauty, that was her credo and she was right.

Iris Apfel turned herself into a meta fashion show because she not only dressed, her outfits consisted of multi-layered sculptures made of feathers, fur, tulle, patterns and lots of jewelry, kilos of chains and bracelets – and especially her big black glasses and the short white hair , both of which also featured in the Barbie doll designed after her.

In all this, what she loved most was the process, not the result, the selection and assembly of fashionable possibilities and impossibilities, the countless crossing of boundaries, the freestyle of a free spirit; she called this her way of playing jazz.

As social media grew, so did Iris Apfel’s global presence, she was incredibly Instagrammable and having fun with it, the platforms gave her even more opportunities for fashion experimentation and photoshoots, she was completely in her paradise, and that audience loved it therefore from .

In 2019, she signed with the important modeling agency IMG. Older women were seen as increasingly popular ‘new’ faces for campaigns and on the catwalks; Helen Mirren, Andy McDowell, Marianne Faithful and Jane Fonda celebrated their ages in a carefree way, which was refreshing, especially for younger women, there was life beyond 50, 60 and 70 – with Iris Apfel even over 90.

Watching her was a joy. And if there was ever anyone who made you want fashion, and even more fashion, and exorbitantly playful individuality, if anyone gave you the courage to embrace fashion, it was her.