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"the grand dame of idiosyncratic fashion"
Jimmy Choo designed the above shoe for New York fashion icon Iris Apfel, "to reflect her personality" according to the Daily Mail.
Apfel may be idiosyncratic, but she has her own, I think, refined taste and style. I doubt she would find the "afrobeat" shoe something to put in her collection, with its
embellishments...which appear to feature tassels and straps in what looks like Rastafarian colours.She praises Manolo Blahnik, I think correctly. He is far superior to Choo, who cleverly manages to market his bland shoes. And where Choo goes for flair, he produces something like the shoe above.
Apfel says about shoe embellishments, and about Blahnik:
I don't mind if a shoe is embellished, but it has to be well designed. Manolo's shoes seem perfectly designed. He knows what he's doing.
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I find the Choo shoe gaudy. But that could just be my taste.
Apfel was featured in fashion photographer Bill Cunningham's documentary biography I'll be your Mirror where he praises her style and fashion. "I would come in to a place and he would say, 'Oh, thank God you're here, everybody here looks so boring,"' reminisces Apfel. You can watch this clip from the film I'll be your Mirror starting at the 1:23 point in the video below:
Cunningham did a review of Apfel's style in October 2005. Below is his October 2, 2005 New York Times photo spread of her many fashion objects, and below that is the transcript of the small article he wrote to go with the photographs.
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ON THE STREET; In Her Image
By Bill Cunningham
Published: October 2, 2005
The fashion world is gathered in Milan and Paris in search of direction and the new. But you needn't fly to Europe to discover a marvelous, rare look at genuine style. "Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection" is the new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
The show is a sampling of Mrs. Apfel's wardrobe over a 50-year period. Mrs. Apfel, left, arranged each mannequin with her personal accessories.
Mrs. Apfel and her husband, Carl, center right, founded the interior decorating textile house Old World Weavers in the mid-1950's. Their travels in search of historic fabrics led to her collection of fashion.
The exhibition spotlights the total look of one woman of style rather than the usual display of designer clothes separated from the wearers' accessory embellishments. Here you have the whole dazzling image, including her signature eyeglasses and her cuff bracelets, always warn in pairs. The galleries were designed by Harold Koda and Stéphane Houy-Towner to capture the joyfulness of the Apfel style.