The 93-year-old Iris Apfel is a cult New York figure: the textile designer who became famous in fashion circles for her colossal collection of costume jewellery, and then for being an exotically dressed eccentric, much cherished in a bland world of airkissing and corporate conformity. We last saw her in Richard Press’s 2010 documentary about another NYC icon, fashion photographer Bill Cunningham; now she is the subject of one of the last films completed by the late Albert Maysles, in which Cunningham is also glimpsed briefly.
It’s an affectionate, slight, minor work. As for Iris’s public image, it’s difficult to deconstruct. Those outsized specs – oddly reminiscent of the architect Philip Johnson – helped make her instantly recognisable celebrity “brand” and I suspect she knows this perfectly well, but Maysles’s film does not press her on when exactly she chose this look. One questioner at a public event asks what came first, the personality or the clothes? Apfel replies with engaging honesty that it’s so far back that she can’t remember. There are no sensational or tragic moments here – in the style of Maysles’s classic Grey Gardens – Iris appears to tire of questioning at one point and wander off down the corridor, but that’s it. An engaging portrait.
