There are those figures in the world who for better or worse are known to virtually everyone. Maybe we do not know much about them, maybe we are not even sure that we actually know what they are about or why they are famous, but we are sure that at least once in our lives we have seen their images printed in the pages of newspapers, or framed on the television screen.

Iris Apfel falls squarely into this category, but it would be utterly reductive to simply consider her a renowned and easily recognizable person. Iris represents a riot of exuberance and courage, always moved by an eccentric and brilliant taste. Throughout her life, despite the passing years, she has never abandoned the image of the eternal girl, heedless of the judgment of others and all forms of rules and etiquette. Clothes and textiles have been part of her daily life since childhood as her mother owns a boutique that becomes Iris’s favorite playground, where she begins to cultivate that hunger for discovery and insatiable curiosity that leads her to never be satisfied and to always be on the cutting edge.

The watershed in her life was her marriage to Carl Apfel, with whom she also established a professional partnership by starting a textile industry, with much satisfaction especially from the Italian market and managing to count celebrities such as Greta Garbo among their clients. Iris increasingly established herself as an interior designer to the point that she was called upon to renovate the furnishings of the White House, working for nine presidents and winning the title “First Lady of Fabric.” She never misses an opportunity to bring out her eclectic style, mixing different pieces: she casually combines garments stolen from high fashion with those taken from flea markets. An absolutely distinctive trait is her being one hundred percent histrionic and exuberant, rejecting any form of minimalism, as she considers it boring and banal, to the point of being called a bulimic of maximalism.

Her attitude of constantly pursuing an irrepressible urge to dare and experiment led her to be definitively consecrated in the early 2000s as a fashion icon. In fact, she demonstrates that she faces the passing years in a chameleon-like manner, almost with the impetuosity of youth: she continues to wear colorful outfits and super flashy accessories with natural ease. It is no coincidence that she has continued to be in the limelight all these years, collaborating with various companies and fashion and make-up houses, as well as being a constant protagonist of books, short films and documentaries dedicated to her. Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the keys to Iris’s success has been the self-deprecation that has always accompanied her, leading her to self-describe herself as “a somewhat aging influencer,” and beating out competition from much younger colleagues.

And because icons get along so well, Mattel has made Iris a Barbie. Last week Iris passed away at the age of 102, leaving behind traces of a blazing life lived as if it had been a car race, preferring to press, with an ever-personal touch, on the pedal of eccentricity, originality, nonconformity and extravagance.