In 2018, she published “Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon,” an autobiographical collection of thoughts, anecdotes and observations on life and style. At the age of 97 in 2019, she signed a modeling contract with global agency IMG.
Iris Barrel was born on August 29, 1921, in Astoria, Queens, the only daughter of Samuel Barrel, owner of a glass and mirror company, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, owner of a fashion boutique. Iris studied art history at New York University and art at the University of Wisconsin, worked for Women’s Wear Daily, apprenticed with interior designer Elinor Johnson, and opened his own design company.
She married Carl Apfel, an advertising executive, in 1948. They had no children. Her husband died in 2015 at the age of 100.
Their Old World weavers had restored curtains, furniture, draperies and other fabrics in the White House for nine presidents, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.
Ms. Apfel’s apartments in New York and Palm Beach were overflowing with furniture and knick-knacks that could have come from a Luis Buñuel movie: porcelain cats, stuffed toys, statues, ornate vases, gilded mirrors, fake fruit, parrots plush, paintings by Velázquez and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a mannequin on an ostrich.
The fashion designer Duro Olowu told the Guardian in 2010 that Ms. Apfel’s work had a universal quality. “It’s not a trend,” he said. “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everyone.”