American icon Iris Apfel, “geriatric starlet” of fashion, dies at 102

Iris Apfel, eccentric fashion icon in New York, died Friday March 1 at the age of 102, announced her official account on Instagram. The self-proclaimed “geriatric starlet” from Queens had recently signed a collection for H&M, after multiple collaborations, notably with Citroën, Magnum, Happy Socks, MAC. A form of consecration, she also inspired a Barbie doll in her image.

With 2.9 million subscribers on Instagram, the centenarian still attended the presentations of great fashion designers, and paraded with her immense crimson smile in her wheelchair. Born in 1921 to a Jewish family in Queens, New York, Iris Apfel studied art history. For decades, she has amassed a collection of clothes from the greatest designers of the 20th century, which fill two floors of her Park Avenue apartment.

In 2005, the Met Museum in New York devoted a retrospective to this wardrobe. For her famous jewelry, she said she got her supplies from Tiffany’s as well as from the Harlem bazaars. “One day, someone said to me: ‘You’re not pretty and you never will be. But that’s okay. You have something much more important: you have style'”she used to say.