Iris Apfel’s Exuberant Apartment

The style icon takes AD inside her bold Manhattan home


Iris Barrel Apfel—fashion muse, decorator, and cofounder of Old World Weavers—wearing Chado Ralph Rucci and jewelry of her own design in the New York City apartment she shares with her husband, Carl. The living room’s bleached-oak boiserie is 18th-century French, and the door hardware is by P. E. Guerin; the screen is also French, while the chair at left, covered in an Old World Weavers tapestry fabric, is 17th-century Sicilian.

In the library, a Dutch painting is displayed above a Louis XVI daybed covered in fabric Apfel reproduced from a 17th-century French document.

A collection of singerie tops an 18th-century Venetian bombé chest in the living room; the back of the English chair at right is painted with chinoiserie designs.

In the entry, an 18th-century English gilt chinoiserie mirror and an Italian console.

An Italian tole chandelier above a Maison Jansen table draped in a woven paisley throw.

The first painting Apfel ever bought—a portrait of the Infanta Margarita she picked up 60 years ago at an antiques shop in Florence.

Bakelite jewelry in the paws of a hand-carved French mountain dog.

The entry contains an 18th-century French screen (left), an early-18th-century painted Genoese corner cabinet, and Louis XVI–style chairs upholstered in an Old World Weavers cut velvet. The needlepoint carpet is English.

“I was one of the first New York women to wear boots,” says Apfel, who designed the gilt-leather-and-fabric pair on the floor at right. Racks of her vintage pieces fill a spare room; she is especially fond of the metallic-check coat by Galanos.

A hallway is lined with dog paintings and 19th-century English bookcases brimming with volumes on fashion, decorative arts, and Chinese costumes and textiles.