Get her style: Iris the 100-year-old style icon

Before consolidating her creative skills in Old World Weavers, Iris studied art history at New York University and attended art school at the University of Wisconsin. But to understand her arc to style icon, it is necessary to recognise Iris’s innate passion for fashion.

She began collecting jewellery as “a young girl,” recalling in her memoir, how she “rode the subway” to scour Greenwich Village junk shops for pieces that were the foundation of her now legendary trove. Later, criss-crossing the globe with Carl for their interiors business, she began collecting fabulous clothing, notably in post-war Paris, where she bought couture samples, ultimately amassing a vast collection that included Dior, Balenciaga and Nina Ricci.

As Accidental Icon, the title of her 2018 autobiography, indicates, her career as fashion icon began serendipitously. The Costume Institute at New York’s world-renowned Metropolitan Museum held a 2005 exhibition, Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel that showcased her spectacular wardrobe and style, and suddenly the fashion world couldn’t get enough of her.

There followed not just a travelling exhibition and a visiting professorship (at the University of Texas), but front-row appearances at Collections; magazine covers (including Harpers Bazaar, Elle and Dazed & Confused); advertising campaigns (for, among others, MAC, Kate Spade and Citroen); a documentary (Iris, 2015); a biography (Rare Bird of Fashion: the irreverent Iris Apfel) and Accidental Icon, her autobiography; a modelling contract with IMG; jewellery lines (for Yoox and a Home Shopping channel); and in 2018, as a Mattel “She-roe,” an “Iris” Barbie Doll.

And now, in spring 2022, there is a collaboration with Sweden’s global fashion giant, whose previous collaborators have included the most elevated fashion gods, from Versace and Karl Lagerfeld to Jimmy Choo and Balmain.

The collection — “inspired,” says H&M, by “Iris’s more-is-more aesthetic” and “unique flair”— launches in selected H&M stores worldwide and online today (and in the US two weeks later). The collection comprises dresses, skirts, blazers, blouses, trousers and, of course, accessories. And, with its bold textures andsilhouettes and bolder colours, it perfectly fits H&M’s description, “playfully over-the-top.”

Clear nods to Apfel’s exquisite couture collection are visible in detail seldom seen on the high street, such as embroidered pea pods with pearls for peas on a jacquard blazer (£120) and loafers embellished with oversized, jewelled frogs or insects (£120). Other stand-out pieces include an impossibly glamorous lilac tulle jacket (£229) and a tiered maxi skirt and blouse, both wittily crafted from an iris-flower print.

H&M also mentions an “eclectic” aesthetic meaning, I think, something for everyone — though perhaps not the faint-hearted.

Naturally, there’s jewellery: a cornucopia of bold, statement necklaces, earrings, brooches, bracelets and bangles, often influenced by nature but always inspired by fabulous pieces Iris has hoarded across her fashion-fabulous lifetime.

So, if you feel it’s time to indulge your inner diva, and love bright, bold over-the-top designs, you can be more Iris at a High Street near you.