Style icon Iris Apfel. Photo: Magnolia Pictures
"I'm not an empty-headed fashionista who just lives to get dressed. Getting dressed is just a small part of my life. I think it's fun. I think it's a creative process. I think it's joyful, and I think everybody should do it as an exercise in creativity."
Iris Apfel came to prominence as an interior designer in 1950s New York, when she and her husband founded a company specialising in hand-woven historic textiles, and furnished nine White Houses.
The 93-year-old became a public figure when New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art raided her extraordinary costume jewellery collection for an exhibition in 2005.
Since then she and her trademark black glasses and stacks of bangles have been seen everywhere, and she has worked as a model, TV host, a stylist and all round fashion industry darling.
Noelle McCarthy talks to Iris Apfel about life as a style icon.
Iris by veteran filmmaker Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter), is screening in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and other centres at the New Zealand International Film Festivals.
