IRIS APFEL – 99

Iris Apfel is a native of New York City and is currently 99 years old, a fashion icon, and a prolific interior designer. She is the late Carl Apfel widow, and together, they built the textile company Old World Weavers during the ’50s, which would earn contracts with the White House. They achieved a lucrative degree of success and even held on to the White House contract through nine presidencies. The couple would relocate back and forth from Europe to the US through the years and brought pieces of non-Western fashion back home.

With all of Iris’s successes in her career, she has been awarded several accolades. Among which was the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Pioneer Award, which was given to her in 2016. And in 2018, the toy company Mattel gave Iris the honor of designing a Barbie Doll in her image.