A fashion icon, Iris Apfel, has recently celebrated her 100th birthday. She was married to Clark Apfel, but the couple did not have children. Together they founded the Old-World Weavers textile company. Let’s have an insight into her life and her net worth.
Net Worth Of Iris Apfel
Iris Apfel, an American businesswoman, interior designer, and fashion icon, has a net worth of $25 million. She has worked for Women’s Wear Daily, and from 1950 to 1992, she was active in several restoration projects like White House for Presidents Truman, Nixon, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, etc. In 2005, the Costume Institute held an exhibition on Apfel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Iris has been featured in a documentary named Iris in 2015. In 2013 she was selected as fifty best-Dressed over the 50s. She was to the University of Texas at Austin at the age of 90 in 2012 as a visiting professor.
She has a home in New York filled with antiques and French-inspired decor, which is the dream house of many fashionists.
Iris Apfel Married Life With Late Husband Carl Apfel
Iris Apfel married Carl Apfel on 22 February 1948. Iris’s husband, Carl, was a textile merchant who died on 1 August 2015 at the age of 100 due to congestive heart failure as per Pret-a-Reporter. On his 100th birthday, Iris threw a birthday party for him, welcoming everyone from Ruben and Isabel Toledo to Bergdorf Goodman's Linda Fargo and designer Naeem Khan.
Iris said they first met in 1947 on Lake George in upstate New York while staying at a resort while having an interview with The Guardian. She stated,
“Our first date was Columbus Day. Thanksgiving, Carl proposed. Christmas I got blinged. Washington’s birthday, we were married.”
After meeting each other, they were attracted to each other. In the documentary about Iris, Carl said, “There was something about her that just got into me. It’s always there.”
Listening to what Carl said, Iris said by patting on his hand, “Awe, my little pussycat … And I figured he was cool, and he was cuddly, and he cooked Chinese, so I couldn’t do any better.”
Iris admitted in the documentary that she wanted to elope instead of a wedding, but her family wanted a wedding. She said while going through an album of old wedding photos,
“I said I’d rather have the money, but the parents and the grandparents wanted the wedding … It was a fairly small wedding—I think 125 people—but very posh.”
After being together as a married couple for two years, the couple co-founded Old World Weavers textile company which restores furnishing for homes. Iris said after opening the textile company, "We never intended to go into the fabric business. Nothing I ever did I intended to do. Everything just kind of happened."
Iris and Carl worked together on many projects, including the White House and Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also traveled together on trips like Turkey, Morocco, and Lebanon to collect everything, which cost few cents, from haute couture pieces to knick-knacks to create one-of-a-kind designs that make her clients happy.
But Iris misses her husband as he passed away few days before his 101st birthday. Iris remembered him, and here is what she said about her husband to T,
“a very generous man, and a very funny man. He had a great, dry sense of humor and he was very kind to everybody.”
She even shared the secret to her happy and long-standing marriage in the documentary Iris:: “sense of humor and giving each other some space.”
She also talked about plastic surgery and said, “Unless you have a nose like Pinocchio or have been in a fire, why mess... You might come out worse. I've seen few people that have come out like a Picasso.”
Iris Apfel Parents Detail
Iris Apfel was born on 29th August 1921 in Astoria, New York City, New York.
She studied art history and went to New York University and the University of Wisconsin to complete her education. After education, she started to work for the Women’s Wear Daily fashion magazine. She is the daughter of Samuel Barrel, a businessman who owned a glass and mirror business, and a Russian-born mother who is the owner of a fashion boutique.
Iris was the only child of her parents and grew up on a farm with her parents and grandparents. From a young age, she used to collect jewelry from place to place.
Recently industry legend has celebrated her 100th birthday on 29th August. She shared the photo on Instagram to 1.9 fan followers, captioning, “It’s not every day that you get to turn 100… May the celebrations commence!”