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To Iris With Love

Featuring over 200 pieces of fashion, accessories, and design from 1921-2024, Christie’s dedicates an auction to one of America’s biggest style-makers, Iris Apfel.

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Handbags displayed at the Iris Apfel Handbag Collection Launch at Henri Bendel on October 12, 2012 in New York City. Photo by Desiree Navarro / Getty Images.

With “Unapologetically Iris: The collection of iris Apfel,” Christie’s has dedicated an online auction celebrating one of America’s most iconic style-makers. Featuring over 200 pieces of fashion, accessories, and design from the collection of Iris Apfel, (1921-2024), this online sale showcases  a gorgeous passion for extravagance. 

“She had an inimitable style, an unrivalled eyewear collection, and unfailing joie de vivre. She’s still an example for all women, a woman who worked hard and succeeded in her personal life—70 years of an apparently happy marriage,” explains Camille de Foresta, Parisian curator, and auctioneer at Christie’s. “A gift for putting beauty and joy everywhere, absolute chic in eccentricity and eclecticism, you can see in the collection that in her clothes or in her interior she mixes with mastery, humor, and luxury designer pieces and vintage pieces. I love this mix. And her gift for staging, too: every photo shoot in which she appears is a delight.”

Courtesy of Christie's.

I interviewed Iris Apfel in New York in 2012 for my book dedicated to the ninety something (Le plus bel Age, Grasset), and I wanted to know more about her. I loved her style, her fantasy, her way to ask first, “Where is the photograph?” At 91 years old, Iris Apfel was wearing a denim suit, lurking in the shadows of this Park Avenue apartment overrun with real and fake plants, masterpieces, and knick-knacks. Behind windows as opaque as Chinese screens, an old air-conditioning unit spit out humid Manhattan air. In her Orientalist boudoir, you could find porcelain monkeys rubbing shoulders with gold-metal palms and macramé cushions. As in the theater, the real and the fake telescoped, to the point of blurring all tracks. 

On the nineteenth floor of this opulent Uptown building, you had the sensation of being on a magic carpet somewhere between Mumbai, Istanbul, and Venice. A double tower of books was standing on either side of an illuminated tree. “We don't celebrate Christmas, it's just a state of mind,” she said. A wooden lion advanced its paws laden with Bakelite bracelets. A porcelain monkey played the violin next to a giant paper bag: “Iris Apfel for Mac.”  She had a special talent of mixing western pieces with Indian accessories, and she had an extraordinary sense of humor. “From a certain age, when you put green eye shadow on your eyelids, the risk is that you'll look like an old tortoise,” she told me.

Courtesy of Christie's.

“Attitude, attitude, attitude!” That was her triple mantra. This Park Avenue lady said she was born with “a souk sense.” Without a hitch, she provoked unprecedented North-South encounters between a Tunisian bridal coat and a Givenchy scarf from the Seventies, a Kriziasweater, and a multicolored damask silk skirt that belonged to a court lady from the Qing dynasty. The worst fashion faux pas in her eyes? “Looking in the mirror and seeing someone else instead. The problem for many women today is that they still haven't found themselves. It's not by imitating others, or rejuvenating themselves with Botox injections, that they'll feel better.” 

This is one of many reasons to explore this incredible “garde-robe,” including ready-to-wear pieces and couture garments from the 1950s to the present. Highlights include a Feather Coat Dior Haute Couture; a Pink, Red and Yellow Color Block Shirt Gown by Carolina Herrera; and a Case of Eighteen multicolor and pattern Iris Apfel x Zenni Eyeglass Frames. Also featured in the sale is a Carved Ostrich-form Bar 'Gussy' Italy, circa 1975.

Courtesy of Christie's.

Iris Apfel was much more than a trendsetter. She’s still a muse, a visionary woman. Even without a cell phone or a iPad; she was corresponding by phone and fax only. She knew perfectly well that the world around her had changed to the point of entitling her lecture program at the University of Texas: “Fashion is not a red-carpet bubble.” Thank you, Iris. With love.  

Select highlights from the collection will be on view at The Colony Hotel from January 29-31. The full collection with be on view at Christie’s New York from February 8-13.

Iris Apfel celebrates her 100th Birthday Party at Central Park Tower on September 9, 2021 in New York City. Photo by Noam Galai / Getty Images.

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