Fashionista Iris Apfel, 'Accidental Icon,' Dies at 102

Iris Apfel, whose outrageous, distinctive style — especially those oversized glasses — made her famous in her 80s, died Friday at her Palm Beach, Florida, home.

She was 102.

Born August 2, 1921, she began working in fashion in 1943 as a Women's Wear Daily copywriter. She and her husband, Carl Apfel, ran an interior design business called Old World Weavers that attracted clients from Greta Garbo to Faye Dunaway with its eclectically sourced components.

She might have died in obscurity, but a 2005 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute that she was asked to curate made her an instant celebrity. "Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection" made up of some of her fabulous accessories, ran for four months, but her fame lasted almost 20 years.

The Met noted, “An American original in the truest sense, Iris Apfel is one of the most vivacious personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design, and over the past 40 years, she has cultivated a personal style that is both witty and exuberantly idiosyncratic."

The self-described "geriatric starlet" was the subject of the book "Rare Bird of Fashion" (2007), had her own line of lipsticks for MAC, anchored an HSN fashion line in 2011, and became a professional model at 97.

The documentary "Iris" (2014) by filmmaker Albert Maysles of "Grey Gardens" fame, was Emmy-nominated.

Her next memoir, in 2018, could have been a description of her life — "Accidental Icon."

She was preceded in death by her husband, at 100, in 2015.