“With remarkable panache and discernment, she combines colors, textures, and patterns without regard to period, provenance, and, ultimately, aesthetic conventions,” the museum continued. “Paradoxically, her richly layered combinations — even at their most extreme and baroque – project a boldly graphic modernity.”

Fond of dubbing herself a “geriatric starlet,” Apfel’s prominence soared following her exhibition at the Met.

In 2007, she became the focal point of a coffee table book aptly titled “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” drawing from the Latin translation of “Rara avis.”