From one of the brothers who brought you the original Grey Gardens comes another documentary about another New York lady. It's
IRIS, directed by Albert Maysles.
I had never heard of her before, and what an amazing person she is! Her sense of style and fashion are enviable. Her sweet demeanor and the love she shares with her 100 year old husband is adorable. At 90 years old, she is going strong and I hope to run into her the next time I visit New York just to say how fabulous I think she is.
I tried to go see the first few showings of this but they were completely sold out. I finally got to see an added screening of it, and even that was packed! Thankfully, there are even more screenings in July!
Here's the description of the film from the VIFF site:
Meet Iris Apfel, doyenne of New York fashion, and more
importantly an indomitable and inspiring life force well into her ninth
decade. Quick-witted and always flamboyantly dressed, Iris retains her
enthusiasm for fashion, art and people. Despite the abundance of glamour
in her current life, she continues to embrace the values and work ethic
established during a middle-class Queens upbringing during the Great
Depression. "I feel lucky to be working. If you’re lucky enough to do
something you love, everything else follows."
"Iris’ creativity lies not in inventing anything new, but in her
startling assemblages of found objects. Her illustrious career as an
interior designer included consultations with multiple successive
inhabitants of the White House (her unspecified “problems” with Jackie
Kennedy are allowed to pass in charged silence), while offbeat items
stored in a massive Long Island City warehouse reflect a long, varied
history of catering to more adventurous upscale clients.
Carl’s 16mm footage and Nikon-shot still photographs document the
couple’s twice-yearly globetrotting shopping trips to out-of-the-way
bazaars, flea markets and assorted outposts in search of the
eye-catching and off-kilter. A priest’s vestments, for instance, might
be bought and repurposed as loungewear. Maysles captures Iris’
present-day shopping expeditions as, squired by designer Duro Olowu, she
ventures into no less esoteric, off-the-beaten-path venues in Harlem,
whose neighborhood churchwomen’s “Sunday best” she emphatically favors
over the uniform black paraded in Soho.
Iris’ love of craftsmanship, which she sees disappearing under a
flood of homogenization and conformity, led her and Carl to found Old
World Weavers, a actory that reproduced unique 17th-, 18th- and
19th-century fabrics and designs — well known, as was Iris herself,
within the trade. But it took a 2005 exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, titled “Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,”
spearheaded by fashion scholar Harold Koda, to transform her, in her own
wry epithet, into “an octogenarian starlet” and to elevate her
“improvisations” to the status of wondrous creations." Ronnie Scheib, Variety
"A joyous celebration of creativity and razor-sharp wit sustained
into old age, as evinced by outspoken nonagenarian fashion icon Iris
Apfel." Variety
IRIS is on at the Vancity Theatre on July 5, 11, 13, 15, 16, & 18! Don't miss out!!
