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.
To paraphrase Atticus Finch, you can’t understand Iris until you’ve looked at the world through her oversize glasses. Every page is a different color, with many backgrounds filled by close-ups of the ornate fabrics her textile company produced. At first, her mind-bending outfits seem like costumes worn to shock or grab attention. But as we leaf through her scrapbook, they begin to feel like her natural plumage. The interiors that we glimpse behind her overflow with her personality—her collector’s passion paired with a huge sense of fun. Seeing life through her lenses is like stepping with Dorothy into Technicolor Oz. But Iris didn’t go over the rainbow; she lived in it.
It’s a chatty book. Some pages contain a single anecdote, others a single sentence. A rather disjointed narrative unwinds through the book, however, and we learn about her grandparents’ emigration from Russia, her childhood in Queens, her art studies. We see her development from a child enchanted with her grandmother’s bags of fabric scraps to a youngster scouring shops for costume jewelry until she emerges as a college graduate finding her footing in the world of fashion and design.
So much of her life story is really a love story. She married Carl Apfel in 1948. They enjoyed both a very happy marriage and a successful professional collaboration. They founded a textile company, Old World Weavers, that reproduced gorgeous historic fabrics. Among their customers were nine First Ladies embarked on White House restorations. They traveled the world together in search of artisans for their company, objets for Iris’s design work, clothes for her closet, and sheer fun for them both. For nearly 70 years, Carl supported Iris in her pursuit of color and beauty, of unique style, and she adored him. Every time Carl’s name appears in the text, a heart emoji follows it.
Iris’s ascent from design professional to style icon began among her colleagues in the fashion milieu, leading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2005 exhibition “Rara Avis,” which showcased her extraordinary collection of clothing and accessories. In 2014, Albert Maysles made an award-winning documentary about her. As her unmistakable image spread through the culture, she entered into design partnerships with many companies, H&M, MAC, Dr. Scholl’s, Ruggable, McDonald’s, Hugo Boss, eBay, and Etsy among them. Finally, in her 90s, she signed with an agent to begin her modeling career. Glossy magazines loved her. At 96, she became the oldest person ever reproduced as a Barbie doll.
Iris called her book “my treasure trove of inspiration, influences, and ideas.” It overflows with advice on how to find one’s own style and reflections on her personal wellspring of creativity. These tidbits are often single sentences or phrases that claim an entire page. Many of them barely achieve the level of greeting-card sentiments: “Life is a rainbow,” “Don’t overthink it,” “Enjoy the ride.” Yet, paired with the astonishing portraits of the extravagantly bespectacled, white-haired, wrinkled, smiling Iris, even these anodyne thoughts invite us to live in her exuberant company for a while.
Colors were the key to everything for Iris. She characterizes many of them here. Courage is her favorite bright red. Denim blue is determination, while teal blue is patience. Violet is for good-byes. “Color can raise the dead,” she declares. Oh, Iris. If only.
Robin Olson is a writer and painter. She lives in Vermont
