Iris Apfel: the muse of New York

Iris Apfel was 83, and 13 years into her retirement, when she became a celebrity. The year was 2005, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York staged an exhibition of her wardrobe. This included some of Apfel's collection of exquisite pieces by rarified Paris and New York designers: there was a coat of multicoloured rooster, duck and fowl feathers by Jean-Louis Scherrer from 1962, and an orange jumpsuit by Geoffrey Beene from the early 80s. But what made the show a word-of-mouth success that hit a nerve beyond the usual reach of Costume Institute fare was the unique way Apfel wore these pieces, which was recreated on the mannequins.

A typical display note ran as follows: "House of Lanvin gown, circa 1985, gold, brown and gray silk taffeta. Bhutan arm bracelet, late 19th century, silver and amber. Tibet cuff bracelet, late 19th century, silver, amber, coral and turquoise. Tibet necklaces, early 20th century, silver, amber, coral, turquoise." The orange jumpsuit was displayed with Native American jewellery and belt, in silver and turquoise; each mannequin in the exhibit wore Apfel's signature owlish glasses. As the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith once wrote: "before multiculturalism was a word, Mrs Apfel was wearing it".

Seven years on and Apfel at 90 is a great deal more famous than she was at 83. She gets recognised on the street and trailed by fashion bloggers. She has an entertainment lawyer and her own range of costume jewellery. "I have a fan base," she told a recent interviewer with undisguised glee. She has become a muse for New York fashion: Ralph Lauren based a 2006 collection on upholstery fabrics as a tribute to Apfel's work as a textile designer; last month, Apfel attended as guest of honour a catwalk show that the designer Joanna Mastroianni billed as being inspired by Apfel's style. Mac cosmetics this year launched a range of Iris Apfel colours, including Pink Pigeon and Scarlet Ibis, referencing the name of the Met show – Rare Bird – and Apfel's penchant for bright colours. Apfel stars, along with Anna Wintour, as a New York grande dame in the documentary Bill Cunningham New York, having been a regular in Cunningham's photos for several decades, and is set to be the subject of her own documentary by Grey Gardens film-maker Albert Maysles.

Now the story of Apfel's style, having travelled from a personal closet to a museum, and from there to the front row and the big screen, is about to make the transition to the shopfloor. Sandra Choi and Simon Holloway, the creative directors of Jimmy Choo, have named a mini collection of maximalist, colourful, ethnic-glamour accessories in her honour this summer. The Iris sandal, handwoven in leather macramé, the classic tan shade set off by a cascade of yellow, red, green and blue resin beads, is what every modern-day Apfel will be wearing in Ibiza this summer.

Apfel has described herself as "the world's oldest living teenager". The young Iris sounds pretty marvellous: she tells a great story about how, as a young woman, she came to be friends with Duke Ellington. She got dressed up, went backstage after a gig, and knocked on the dressing room door. Ray Nance, Ellington's trumpeter, opened it and asked: "Lordy, lordy – who's your tailor?" and a friendship was born. As a student, she won the Vogue writing prize, which led to a first job on Womenswear Daily. After marrying Carl Apfel, they set up Old World Weavers, whose reproductions of antique fabrics became essential accessories for the smartest households, until the Apfels eventually sold the company and retired.

To give some measure of their success: Old World provided curtains, furniture and drapes for the White House through nine presidential administrations. As a result, the Apfels live a gilded uptown life in a Park Avenue apartment with "a possible Velasquez" on the wall.

But Apfel has seized the imagination not as a couture fashion plate but as an example to a free-spirited, adventurous New York mindset that, these days, seems in danger of getting lost beneath the anodyne beauty of a Manhattan aesthetic that worships cosmetic dentistry and blow-drying above individuality or creativity. Marc Jacobs, another New Yorker with a craving for adventure in his clothes, told the International Herald Tribune recently that "it's the life of these [clothes] that's interesting to me … whether you find yourself on a curb after partying in a dress, sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette at the end of a night or whether you get whisked away by your Prince Charming."

Apfel has a story to tell about each of her outfits; she insists that hers is not a fashion collection, because she bought every piece to wear. "I'm a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it's valuable," she says. The unifying principle is excess. "My look is either very baroque or very Zen – everything in between makes me itch."

Like a true New Yorker, Apfel does a great one-liner. One of her best is: "When you don't dress like everybody else, you don't have to think like everybody else." She is far from immune from fashion snobbery, and has been known to rail against fat people wearing stretch jeans, and anyone at all wearing flip-flops, but she speaks sense on the subject of ageing. "Coco Chanel once said that what makes a woman look old is trying desperately to look young. Why should one be ashamed to be 84? Why do you have to say that you're 52? Nobody's going to believe you anyway, so why be such a fool? It's nice that you got to be so old. It's a blessing."