Education
She studied art history at New York University and attended art school at the University of Wisconsin.
She studied art history at New York University and attended art school at the University of Wisconsin.
Born Iris Barrel in Astoria, Queens, New York, Apfel is the only child of Samuel Barrel, whose family owned a glass-and-mirror business, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, who owned a fashion boutique. Both were Jewish. As a young woman, Apfel worked for Women"s Wear Daily and for interior designer Elinor Johnson. She also was an assistant to illustrator Robert Goodman.
Two years later, they launched the textile firm Old World Weavers and ran it until they retired in 1992.
From 1950 to 1992, Iris Apfel took part in several design restoration projects, including work at the White House for nine presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. Through their business, the couple began traveling all over the world where she began buying pieces of non-Western, artisanal clothes.
She wore these clothes to clients" high-society parties. In the United Kingdom she has been doing a television car advert for the DS3 in 2016 Museum retrospectives On September 13, 2005, The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York premiered an exhibition about Iris Apfel"s style entitled Rara Avis (Rare Bird): The Irreverent Iris Apfel.
The success of the exhibition, curated by Stéphane Houy-Towner, prompted an initial traveling version of the exhibit at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York, and later at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
The Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History in Boynton Beach, Florida, is designing a building that will house a dedicated gallery of Apfel"s clothes, accessories, and furnishings. Advisory and academic roles At age 90 in 2012, Apfel was a visiting professor at University of Texas at Austin. Apfel consults and lectures about style and other fashion topics.
In 2013, she was listed as one of the fifty "Best-Dressed over 50s" by The Guardian.