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Iris Apfel remembered by Duro Olowu

The fashion designer on inspirational moments spent with his tirelessly creative friend, a visionary stylist and textiles maker

Much of her unpublicised work, particularly in the last 15 years of her life, involved mentoring and arranging internships for design students in high schools and colleges. From her career at Women’s Wear Daily to launching Old World Weavers, the textile firm she co-founded in 1950 with her husband Carl Apfel(the love of her life and partner-in-crime, who lived to the age of 100), Iris was a hard worker and a businesswoman with unrelenting drive. Photograph: Noam Galai/Getty Images for Central Park TowerOver long transatlantic calls, or delicious home-cooked lunches or dinners when I was in New York (mostly just the two of us after Carl died in 2015), she would ask about what was going on in my life, tenderly inquire after my now-deceased father in Lagos (whom she referred to as “Daddy”) and, of course, update me on all her latest projects.

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