“When we first met William we were not looking to hire anyone, but William came in and worked his way into Vanguard and into our hearts,” she told me. One of the blessings she has received has been the return of William Koutoulas, who worked with Don for over six years as assistant brewer. Murray is new to the PNW after an over 20-year career as a chef in places including San Diego and New York, and he says his menu will take inspiration from regionally and locally sourced goods and some internationally influenced dishes. I haven’t sampled any of the fare yet, but the kitchen will be the home of Saint LoveJoy, a new operation by Colin Murray. We by no means are practicing any satanism or anything like that.” What he is practicing is great beer, great ambience and, I’m told, great food. “It can come across as satanic to some people that just are ignorant and see anything with a skull or any robed character and think, that’s evil, that’s black magic,” he told me this week. Zermeño, a self-described “little skater freak” as a youth, grew up listening to his parents and grandparents tell stories about the chupacabra and witchcraft, and he says he loves dark themes and horror movies. She starred in an advertisement for the jewellery designer Alexis Bittar was the subject of an exhibition at Le Bon Marché department store in Paris and modelled for the Australian fashion brand Blue Illusion, which targets women who are over 40.And don’t be threatened by the dark imagery - you’re not walking into a cult den. Iris Apfel was soon in demand as a lecturer on style and fashion, and at the age of 90 found herself appointed as a visiting professor at the University of Texas. The exhibition, called “Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection”, was a spectacular success and launched her on to a wider stage. Thirteen years later the Met’s Costume Institute needed to find something to fill its autumn show, and its curator Harold Koda asked Iris Apfel if she would contribute items from her collection of clothing and jewellery. Together they had been trawling the flea markets of Europe and the souks of North Africa for antique fabrics to decorate the houses of America’s rich (at the same time she began to collect some of the exotic outfits that would feature in her extraordinary collection).įinally, in 1992, the Apfels sold their business and retired to their Park Avenue apartment, which was stuffed full of antique French, English and Italian furniture, and exotic tapestries and paintings collected over many years. In 1948 she married Carl Apfel, and two years later they established a textiles firm, Old World Weavers. She then landed an assistant’s job with the interior designer Elinor Johnson.
She was born Iris Barrel on August 29 1921 in Queens, New York, the only child of Samuel Barrel, whose family owned a business selling glass and mirrors, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, who owned her own boutique and, according to her daughter, “dressed like the Duchess of Windsor”.Īs a schoolgirl Iris liked to explore the junk shops in Greenwich Village, in one of which she managed to purchase a diamond brooch for 65 cents.Īfter reading art history at New York University she first considered becoming a teacher, but abandoned this in favour of a job with the fashion industry’s trade journal Women’s Wear Daily. She was dismissive of plastic surgery for purely cosmetic purposes (“I mean, nobody’s going to think you’re 32, so what’s the point? You could come out looking like a Picasso painting.”). I think trying to look like a spring chicken when you’re not makes you look ridiculous.” Iris Apfel relished her celebrity as the high priestess of style, and frequently castigated the fashion industry for its obsession with youth: “Seventy-year-old ladies don’t have 18-year-old bodies, and 18-year-olds don’t have a 70-year-old’s dollars,” she would say.įor their part, women should not play the industry’s game: “I believe it was Chanel who said, ‘Nothing makes a woman look so old as trying desperately hard to look young.’ I think you can be attractive at any age. Soon brands such as Citroën, MAC Cosmetics and the wearable tech company WiseWear were queuing up to hire her to front their campaigns, and the documentary maker Albert Maysles made a film about her life, Iris, which was released shortly after his death in 2015.