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Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon by Iris Apfel: book review


 

Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon (2018) is the memoir of the 97-year-old New York fashion icon, textile manufacturer, and interior designer.  

 

Iris Apfel (1921-) is a unique woman with an unapologetic way of dressing for herself in her own style. This is not a typical memoir. Instead, it is a colourful book of anecdotes, stories, information, quotes, and advice. 

 

When Iris Barrel married Carl Apfel in 1948, they established an international textile manufacturing company, working on replicating fabrics for the White House for nine American presidents. Retiring from the business in 1992, Iris continued to work in textiles and fashion. 

 

She is well known for layering her clothes, saying ‘More is more, and less is a bore.’ She is also noted for her iconic glasses and her love of colour (‘I never met a colour I didn’t like’). She calls herself ‘the World’s Oldest Living Teenager.’ Her lessons for a long life and energy include ‘having a sense of wonder, a sense of humor, and a sense of curiosity.’ 

 

Apfel begins her memoir in 2005 with a new phase in her life when the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to exhibit her fashion accessories and jewelry. While people said she was ‘an overnight sensation’ she reminded them that it was 70 years in the making. Then she takes readers back to her life when she was 12 years old.

 

She writes of her travels for textiles, the White House years, and her love for her husband Carl who died in 2015. All of this is accompanied by 180 photographs and illustrations which makes this memoir very pleasing on the eye. 

 

It’s great, informative, inspirational, and funny, with all the colours of a rainbow.









 

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

 

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