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I've always loved to help people, young people in particular.
Iris Apfel
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Fashion and interior design are one and the same.
Iris Apfel
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My father told me once not to expect anything from anybody so I wouldn't be disappointed. If somebody was nice and did nice things for me, I should be overjoyed, but I shouldn't go through life expecting it, which is very good advice.
Iris Apfel
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It's better to be happy than to be well-dressed.
Iris Apfel
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I'm happy. I give thanks every morning that I can get up, that I still have my husband with me. I'm extremely grateful. After all, how many 93-year-old cover girls do you know?
Iris Apfel
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The world is not black and white; there are lots of shades of grey. There are good things and bad things in every era, and I think it's kind of very blindfolded to say one era was wonderful, as it was wonderful, but there were a lot of bad things as well.
Iris Apfel
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Being well-dressed is a wonderful thing, but I don't think it should be life threatening.
Iris Apfel
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Understated jewellery is not for me. It's too itsy-bitsy. My husband is lucky, as I've never had a yen for real jewels.
Iris Apfel
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I'm from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions - very primitive.
Iris Apfel
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My look is either very baroque or very Zen - everything in between makes me itch.
Iris Apfel
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I'm not a pretty person. I don't like pretty, so I don't feel badly. Most of the world is not with me, but I don't care.
Iris Apfel
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I'm not a collector of clothes. I've got clothes to wear.
Iris Apfel
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I wasn't interested at all in doing a documentary. I was not a public figure.
Iris Apfel
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I was in art school since I was five years old. I've always been to art school. Everything that's happened to me, nothing's been planned. I've never had a business plan. I just kind of fell into it, and I liked it, and I took a chance. I took a lot of chances in my life.
Iris Apfel
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I still have the dress I wore on the first date with my husband, which was more than 66 years ago. I still have it, and it still fits.
Iris Apfel
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Coco Chanel once said that what makes a woman look old is trying desperately to look young. Why should one be ashamed to be 84? Why do you have to say that you're 52? Nobody's going to believe you anyway, so why be such a fool? It's nice that you got to be so old. It's a blessing.
Iris Apfel
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I just roll with the punches.
Iris Apfel
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Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who you want to be.
Iris Apfel
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Fashion has this youth mania. But 70-year-old ladies don't have 18-year-old bodies, and 18-year-olds don't have a 70-year-old's dollars.
Iris Apfel
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I hate being asked how I met my husband and very personal questions like that. I don't like that. People are too nosey. Intelligent questions I like, but sometimes people ask such silly, dopey ones.
Iris Apfel
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The fashion industry has done itself in by neglecting the 60- to 80-year-old market. They have the time and the economic resources. They want to go shopping.
Iris Apfel
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I had a very brilliant father who was not only intellectual, but was street-smart and very curious to boot. The day I found out that he didn't know everything, I grew up. It was a shock. I just thought that the man was the end-all of everything, and he knew the answer to everything. Then I found out I'd have to find out my own answers.
Iris Apfel
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You learn as you grow up, if you're intelligent - or even three-quarter witted - that there's no free lunch. You pay for things in various ways. Living, loving, everything else is a matter of the same principles: you learn to work with what you have.
Iris Apfel
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Throughout history, clothes represented who you were; they are a great vehicle for explaining who you are. During the Ching dynasty, for example, what you wore and how it was made reflected your status in society. People could literally read your clothes like a book, just by its color and how it was embroidered.
Iris Apfel
