Tuesday, August 25, 2015

An outfit inspired by Iris Apfel

COS top (on sale now)
Stubbs & Wootton Screw U slippers
Kate Spade velvet bag from when I worked as Kate's design assistant about 17 (!) years ago
Zara jeans
Hermès scarf

Last night I watched Iris, a new documentary by Albert Maysles, about Iris Apfel, a 90-year old New Yorker who was a renowned interior decorator and textile designer, and has more recently become known as a fashion icon to a younger generation. The film shows her going from fashion shoots to personal appearances to university lectures to home shopping network appearances, undeterred by her advanced age and with a passion for design, craftsmanship, color, shape, fashion and style that I have never seen expressed before. She says physical beauty can be an obstacle for a woman - because people who are pretty don't need to develop a personality, a style, to be charming or to be intelligent, and when their beauty wears off, they have nothing to fall back on. 

Iris was told by the founder of the Loehmans store in New York that she was not pretty, but that she had something a lot more important, she had style. She certainly took that to heart, and is still shopping happily some 65 years later, while simultaneously donating some of her older couture pieces to a museum. And while you're at it, watch Bill Cunningham New York as well, another inspiring documentary about an older participant in New York's fashion scene.

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