Iris Apfel, who died Friday at the age of 102, is remembered by Harold Koda, former chief curator at The Met's Costume Institute.
Former curator in charge of the Costume Institute and fashion scholar Harold Koda reminisced about her Saturday. “I wouldn’t call Iris’ pleasure in getting dressed a hobby, unless you think of Matisse as a hobbyist who cut out colored papers as a diversion. Dressing up for Iris was a vocation. She did have a hobby — it was shopping. Not you and me shopping, big-game hunter shopping. She might have looked like a bird-of-paradise, but on the hunt, she was a raptor.
Without knowing Apfel’s identity due to Milbank’s discretion, Koda tucked away the information and later when another exhibition fell through, Koda liked the prospect of staging a show about accessories — not fine jewelry — at the Costume institute for the first time. During his first visit to Apfel’s apartment, it was difficult to determine its size, since boxes of the clothes that she had acquired over the years occupied the better part of the three bedrooms and the living room.
At a Connecticut antiques show, Apfel spied two mannequin hands that were “beautiful. But who needs two mannequin hands?” Koda said. “In another barn, she found a rosary for a santo, one of those religious figures, with beads the size of gumballs that were made in the same tone of wood as the hands that she has just bought. In the show, she used them with the mannequin hands grasping each other. She bought things that interested her not to match them.
Many would be mistaken to think that great women of style are “narcissistic, vain or like bobblehead dolls,” the ones that are identified with bringing something really original to fashion are all really smart, according to Koda. The consummate dinner companion, who engaged in extraordinary conversations, Apfel “kept the stories coming.” Her many travels always involved meeting people and enriching her wide circle of friends.
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