Do people still keep scrapbooks? We have digital files and folders, source books, and mood boards. Photo albums hold snaps from the long-ago Age of Kodak. But scrapbooks, saving everything from postcards to ticket stubs, seem to have disappeared. Almost. Colorful, Iris Apfel’s new book, published after her death in March, at 102, is a scrapbook of all things Iris.
Like one of her closets, the book overflows with extraordinary outfits, fabulous costume jewelry, enormous hats, and, of course, her trademark super-size spectacles. Packed into this visual bible of larger-than-life style are bite-size bits of her philosophy, her history, her advice: the Book of Iris. She jumps so vividly to life that as you turn the last, pink-edged page, you almost expect a pop-up Iris to burst from the turquoise endpapers to share just one more aperçu.
