Quotes from Iris Apfel

I've never seen anything like the way some young people behave. They go out on a date, and they're sitting opposite each other at a table, and they're not looking at each other, and they text each other as though they're deaf-mutes. It's insane.

I've always loved to help people, young people in particular.

I don't happen to approve of plastic surgery. I think God put plastic surgeons on this earth for good reasons - people get burned or people might have a nose like Pinocchio and that has to be fixed. But to just chop yourself up to look a few years younger? You could come out looking like a Picasso picture.

Fashion has this youth mania. But 70-year-old ladies don't have 18-year-old bodies, and 18-year-olds don't have a 70-year-old's dollars.

I don't look at Instagram. I don't have much to do with social media.

I'm a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it's valuable.

I was never a fan of Chanel. I liked it on other people. Some other people. All the ladies who were too plump and busty looked like little sausages.

I go out in New York, and I think, boy, you can look at someone and pretty much determine their zip code. Everyone seems to want to conform. I wonder, are they all just button-pressers, on the Internet all day long? I don't know.

You can't try to be somebody you're not; that's not style. If someone says, 'Buy this - you'll be stylish,' you won't be stylish because you won't be you. You have to learn who you are first, and that's painful.

Creativity is down the tube. And people give a lot of lip service to individuality. I know they all appreciate it, but they all say they would like to do it, but they don't want to work at it, and it doesn't come out of the sky.

You have to observe a few simple rules in dressing, which are really not rules; it's just being appropriate. If you're 70 and want to wear miniskirts, 70-year-old knees ain't pretty!

I have ideas that I think might be amusing, and I try them, and if they look right, I carry them out, and if they don't, I throw them out and try something else. I don't agonize about it.

I love high-end designers, but a head-to-toe designer look for me is extremely boring. I've always mixed it up.

I'd rather go to a flea market than just about anything. It's the process I like - the same with getting dressed. If I've got someplace to be, I'll spend more time getting dressed than I spent at the actual event. Sometimes. Even in my own closet, I love to dig and search and find.

I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate.

I had a very brilliant father who was not only intellectual, but was street-smart and very curious to boot. The day I found out that he didn't know everything, I grew up. It was a shock. I just thought that the man was the end-all of everything, and he knew the answer to everything. Then I found out I'd have to find out my own answers.

I think people try so hard to learn everything that they miss all the wonderful essentials. There is so much mystery in life that you should leave a mystery.

Understated jewellery is not for me. It's too itsy-bitsy. My husband is lucky, as I've never had a yen for real jewels.

I think if women put some more of the time and money they put on their heads in their heads, they'd be better off.

I think people have to sharpen their eyes and look. I always feel like a big sponge: I feel like I learn lots of things by osmosis, and I feel that I'm always absorbing. I mean, when people say, 'What is your inspiration?' I could throw up. I mean, I'm inspired by the fact I get up in the morning. And I'm still here.

There was Pauline de Rothschild, who I thought was very fabulous, and Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress, very chic, very clever, very original. I admired both those women very much. And I had a great example with my mother, who was extremely chic.

I get very involved with my things, and they are not standard equipment.

My father told me once not to expect anything from anybody so I wouldn't be disappointed. If somebody was nice and did nice things for me, I should be overjoyed, but I shouldn't go through life expecting it, which is very good advice.

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.