Iris Apfel
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.Collection: Morning
I'm a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it's valuable.Collection: Love
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?'Collection: Change
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.Collection: Good
I think some people like me because I'm different. I don't think like everybody else. People are so tied up in the worst parts of technology these days. They live a life pressing buttons. They don't use their imaginations.Collection: Technology
I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Great
I'm a practical person. Most fashion people live in the clouds, and they're full of it. I live like a human being - or, I try to - and I have to be intelligent; I have to be practical. I'm a great believer in common sense, and the older I get, I see that common sense is not that common.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Good
You can change the look of an outfit so easily by changing the kind of jewellery you wear. If you have a basic outfit on - a black sweater and skirt or a simple black dress - you can go from the office to a cocktail party at night just by changing your jewellery. It helps if you change your shoes as well.Collection: Change
Fashion really is women's liberation in a lot of ways. Look at how many women in this country are depressed about how they look and how they think they have to look! It's really sad. And it's not about money.Collection: Women
I used to love to create outfits, and I still do - I just don't have the time. How can you wear one thing and never wear it again? Even my wedding dress - I had a dress made that I could wear again. I'm a child of the depression, so I'm very, very practical.Collection: Wedding
People with a lot of money don't dress as well as people who have to make do, who have to be inventive. Those are the people who are always more interestingly dressed, I think. Everything I do, I do with gut instinct. If I think too much, it won't come out right.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Money
I don't do very much for beauty. I use very simple things on my skin. I haven't got time. I would always get facials and then come home laden with product, and pay a lot of money and never use it. Anyway, one day a dermatologist told me to use Cetaphil to clean my face and as a moisturizer, and that's what I do.Collection: Money
I had the good fortune to be able to take a course with Margaret Mead. I had a fabulous art course, where it was explained to me that nothing exists in a vacuum, that everything is a result of the period in which it's done - the economics, the sociology, the politics, all sewn together. That was a very important lesson.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
Technology is a wonderful thing, but I think it's violently misused.Collection: Technology
Oh my God, I'm a walking advertisement for discounted shopping.Collection: God
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.Collection: Age
In my view, you can't go to the future if you haven't come from the past.Collection: Future
Clothes are not frippery. Properly done, they can be an art form.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Work
I never had to look for confidence because I just wore what I wanted to wear. I would never wear anything to offend my husband or my mother, but outside of that, I always figured, I hope I'm not a rebel, and I hope everybody liked it. And if they didn't like it, it really was not going to disturb me because it was their problem, not mine.Collection: Hope
You have to push yourself when you're older because it's very easy to fall into the trap. You start to fall apart - you just have to do your best to paste yourself together. I think doing things and being active is very important. When your mind is busy, you don't hurt so much.Collection: Best
You don't find out who you are unless you work at it.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Work
I don't get dressed up every day. I'm very busy. I get really annoyed when people talk about me as a 'fashionista.' I get dressed up when I have to go out. Most of the time, I'm running around in jeans.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Time
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?Collection: Morning
I'm not out to preach. I just live my own life. I'm very happy if I can help somebody - that's wonderful. But it's up to them what they want to think about it or what they want to take away; it's their business, not mine.Collection: Business
Great personal style is an extreme curiosity about yourself.Collection: Great
I am not a fashionista, and I don't dress up. Usually if I'm at home, where I am now, I'm wearing a robe.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Good
Fashion and interior design are one and the same.Collection: Design
I love high-end designers, but a head-to-toe designer look for me is extremely boring. I've always mixed it up.
Anything that's feathery-looking, I love.
I like to improvise.
My mother was a big influence; she was exceedingly chic, completely dressed in a completely different manner than I did. I was a child of the Depression, so she taught me all about accessories, and I always tell everybody she worships at the altar of the accessory.
I'm not a collector of clothes. I've got clothes to wear.
I go out in New York, and I think, boy, you can look at someone and pretty much determine their zip code. Everyone seems to want to conform. I wonder, are they all just button-pressers, on the Internet all day long? I don't know.
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.
Technologically, I live in the 17th century; I don't have a computer, I don't have any of that stuff. I don't look at the Internet, although I know people tell me I'm all over it. Somebody told me they Googled me, and they said I was mentioned two million times, some stupid thing... but who cares?
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.
I was never a fan of Chanel. I liked it on other people. Some other people. All the ladies who were too plump and busty looked like little sausages.
The White House is the people's house. When you do historical restoration, that must be what it is.
Being well-dressed is a wonderful thing, but I don't think it should be life threatening.