Iris Apfel Quotes
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I like to improvise.
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Shock can kill you. Shock is terrible. But what you've got to do is live in the present, which is what I have always done.
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Great personal style is an extreme curiosity about yourself.
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I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing.
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There was Pauline de Rothschild, who I thought was very fabulous, and Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress, very chic, very clever, very original. I admired both those women very much. And I had a great example with my mother, who was extremely chic.
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I get very involved with my things, and they are not standard equipment.
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The White House is the people's house. When you do historical restoration, that must be what it is.
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Oh my God, I'm a walking advertisement for discounted shopping.
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I swear on everything holy I do not know what's on the Internet about me.
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Anything that's feathery-looking, I love.
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I'd rather go to a flea market than just about anything. It's the process I like - the same with getting dressed. If I've got someplace to be, I'll spend more time getting dressed than I spent at the actual event. Sometimes. Even in my own closet, I love to dig and search and find.
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Nothing I ever did I expected to do. It just kind of happened.
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I think people have to sharpen their eyes and look. I always feel like a big sponge: I feel like I learn lots of things by osmosis, and I feel that I'm always absorbing. I mean, when people say, 'What is your inspiration?' I could throw up. I mean, I'm inspired by the fact I get up in the morning. And I'm still here.
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I'm a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it's valuable.
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In America, it has been proven that the bulk of spending money is in the hands of women between 60 and 80, so it's so stupid. The people who do have the time and money to shop are either retired or empty-nesters.
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You don't find out who you are unless you work at it.
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I've never seen anything like the way some young people behave. They go out on a date, and they're sitting opposite each other at a table, and they're not looking at each other, and they text each other as though they're deaf-mutes. It's insane.
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I don't happen to approve of plastic surgery. I think God put plastic surgeons on this earth for good reasons - people get burned or people might have a nose like Pinocchio and that has to be fixed. But to just chop yourself up to look a few years younger? You could come out looking like a Picasso picture.
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People say, 'You have inspired me, you've given me courage...' They've gone so far as to say, 'You've changed my life!' And I would come back and say to my husband, 'I can't understand it - what kind of poor little life did she have if I had to come and change it?'
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I absolutely consider fashion a form of art. Of course, there is some fashion that is not art at all - it's utilitarian, made for the purpose of covering up. And there are a lot of people out there who put a lot of effort into looking awful. But there are also people putting the same amount of energy into making bad art.
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I always tell people I'm very large in Uzbekistan.
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We did major work at the White House. But what people often don't understand is that when you do a historic restoration, you can't just do whatever you want. You work alongside the fine-arts commission and are obliged to create a replica of the past, as close as humanly possible. It's a historic institution, not a showhouse.
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Just because you get to a certain number doesn't mean you have to roll up into a ball and wait for the grim reaper. We were put on this earth to do something! If you stop using your brain, at any age, it is going to stop working. It's like if you stop using your hand, it will atrophy. I think doing nothing is a curse.
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Creativity is down the tube. And people give a lot of lip service to individuality. I know they all appreciate it, but they all say they would like to do it, but they don't want to work at it, and it doesn't come out of the sky.