Fashion Designer Iris Apfel Dead at 102
Iris Apfel
Iris Apfel, the fashion icon and interior designer known for her colorful clothing and large, round, black-rimmed glasses, died on March 1, 2024. She was 102.
Apfel’s official Instagram account confirmed her death with a photo post of her posing while surrounded by glittery gold and black fabric. No cause of death was given. Her death came just one day after she celebrated her half birthday on Leap Day.
Apfel was born Iris Barrel on Aug. 29, 1921. She married Carl Apfel in 1948. The couple owned Old World Weavers, a textile business often called upon for restoration work for the White House and celebrities including Estee Lauder and Greta Garbo. She and Carl were together until his death in 2015. They had no children.
Apfel's eccentric fashion choices made her somewhat of a style icon and the focus of an exhibit at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. She later built a massive following on social media where she shared photos and videos with her millions of followers.
Apfel also interacted with many young fans in person through her time spent as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she began teaching students who were studying within the school’s Textiles and Apparel Program in 2010. She later collaborated with clothing company H&M to create the Iris Apfel x H&M collection.
Her agent, Lori Sale, remembered Apfel as “extraordinary” and “a visionary in every sense of the word” in a statement shared with Variety.
“Working alongside her was the honor of a lifetime,” Sale’s statement said. “I will miss her daily calls, always greeted with the familiar question: ‘What have you got for me today?’ Testament to her insatiable desire to work.”
Sale’s statement also acknowledged Apfel’s trademark glasses, through which “she saw the world as a kaleidoscope of color, a canvas of patterns and prints.”
"Her artistic eye transformed the mundane into the extraordinary and her ability to blend the unconventional with the elegant was nothing short of magical,” Sale said.
Next: Christie Brinkley Shares How Fashion Icon Iris Apfel Celebrated 102nd Birthday in Stylish Photos
