Tag: Iris Apfel

The Boss

RIP – Iris Apfel (We lost a good one yesterday. What a strong inspiration to live your life fully, up until it is the time to pass on, at the ripe old age of 102 . . . . ) A fashion designer once said this about Iris Apfel’s trademark look: “It appeals to a certain kind of joy in everybody.” Thank you, Iris, for your bravery, your audacity and your authenticity. Thank you for your joy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Here are some of Iris Apfel’s best quotes:

“When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else.”

“More is more and less is a bore.”

“Remember not to be bossy… be the boss!!”

“Get comfortable outside of your comfort zone.”

“Get old, but don’t get boring!”

“If your hair is done properly and you are wearing good shoes, you can get away with anything.”

“You don’t have to be an artist to be a creator, because creativity comes in a lot of forms, like cooking or keeping a house or dressing well. What you need is imagination, to make things up for yourself.”

“The worst fashion faux pas is looking in the mirror and seeing somebody else.”

“When you try too hard to have style, you look uncomfortable, like you’re wearing a costume, like the clothes are entering the room before you do. If you’re uptight, you won’t be able to carry off even a seemingly perfect outfit. If that’s happening, I say abandon the whole thing. It’s better to be happy than well dressed.”

“You can’t go home again. If an experience was wonderful, don’t try to re-create it. It will never be as beautiful as it was the first time.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

592. What is your favorite decorative piece or artwork that you own?

Non-Boring Friday

Good morning!!! Happy Friday!!! Happy Best Day of the Week!!! Happy Cinco De Mayo!!! On Fridays on the blog, I discuss the stuff of life that makes life just so fun. I call it Favorite Things Friday and I would love it if you would share some of your favorites in my Comments section. Now, on to my favorite for today:

At the end of April, my husband and I were in Italy, and in Florence we had a tour guide who was extremely dramatic, and also quite attractive. As snobby and eccentric as she came across, she still had obvious flair. As we were walking the streets, our fashionable tour guide airly pointed out a store and stared deeply at my face, apparently checking for wrinkles.

“Oh yes, I can see that you would remember the 1980s,” she said quite confidently.

“That jewelry maker there,” she said, pointing to a store, “is making quite the splash, all over the world. Angela Caputi is bringing back the huge statement pieces of the 80s. You may want to check it out, if you dare . . .”

The Angela Caputi store was my very first stop the next day. And I purchased three enormous, over-the-top, interesting, eye-catching, popping pieces of jewelry (perhaps that’s part of the reason why we had to pay for extra heavy baggage on the way home?!) Angela Caputi jewelry is big and colorful and plastic-y and not for the faint of heart. One evening I wore my enormous Angela Caputi elephant (trunk-up, of course) orange and turquoise, charm bracelet to dinner, and I had at least 3-4 women ask me where I had purchased it. Angela Caputi jewelry is all that you need to make a plain black outfit, or a simple linen dress, make you look like you should have been invited to the Met Ball. (I imagine that Iris Apfel owns hundreds of Caputi pieces.)

Have a safe, fun, fabulous Friday, friends!!! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Embrace the Mess

I’m a “messy desk” person. I’m one of those kids that had their desks turned upside down more than once.  Turns out I’m in good company.  Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison were all “messy deskers.”  I recently cut out a picture of Karl Lagerfeld, the famous former creative director of both Chanel and Fendi, sitting at his very messy desk.  In the photograph, it looks like he is about to be buried in a mountain of papers, magazines and pens, with him barely noticing the catastrophe at hand.  I can relate.

Einstein said, “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”

A recent study at the University of Minnesota found that creative geniuses work better in chaotic work spaces.  They found in a study comparing “messy deskers” to “neat deskers”, that the messier participants came up with far more interesting and creative ideas than the neater participants when judged by an impartial panel of judges.  The study came to the conclusion that the neater desk people tended to be better “rule followers”, whereas messier people are more likely to take more risks and to try new things.

This makes me feel good.  Today’s world seems to definitely lean towards “Apple Store kind of living.”  Minimalist is the modern theme for rooms, stores, computer homepages, you name it.  This stinks for girls like me who love clutter and trinkets.  I’m with Iris Apfel on this one.  She says:

“More is more.  Less is a bore.”

Now of course, I am smart enough to know that “facts” and “statistics” are easily skewed to one’s particular point of view.  If I were a “Tidy Tammy”, I’m sure that I could write an equally compelling article as to why I am so much better for being neat and orderly and efficient.  That’s what is so great about perspective.  It is easily skewed.  So, I’m going to stick with my perspective that my messy desk points to me being an absolute creative genius.  It will help make my Monday more bearable, as I look for my coffee cup under my piles of folders and tablets.

Finders Keepers

Recently, right before my son moved out to his new adult life, I lost two “good” pieces of jewelry on two separate occasions.  Now these weren’t “insurable” items or family heirlooms, but they weren’t Forever 21 clearance items either. (Now on an aside, I love all of my jewelry and much like one of my favorite fashion icons, Iris Apfel, a 97 year old fashion maven, I might even like some of my faux pieces better than my real pieces.)  Anyway, I was driven to distraction trying to find these items.  Unfortunately, in the process of looking for the jewelry, I did not find the pieces I was looking for, but what I did find was a whole herd of dust bunnies and several items that should have been donated to Goodwill eons ago.

Now, I’m always looking for the meaning of “why things happen”.  I was incredibly intent of finding the jewelry and I had such a laser focus on that intent that it certainly kept me from thinking about the idea that my son was leaving our nest, never to return to it again, as a child.  It was certainly easier to vent all of my frustration on the helplessness of not knowing where the jewelry had gone to, then to face my intense feelings of loss of the only structure that our nucleus family had ever known.  I was also admonishing myself for my carelessness for not appreciating my items like I should have and perhaps even taking them for granted.  Did I wear them as many times as I could have or did I assume they would always be available to me whenever I wanted them to be?  You see where these analogies are going.

My Catholic friends have always suggested to turn to St. Anthony to ask for his help to intercede with God when you lose items.  Now, I’m not Catholic so I had to Google the appropriate way to officially ask for St. Anthony’s help.  I looked up the prayer and it essentially said something to the affect of please help me to find my items, but if it is not God’s will to find the items, please give me total peace with that fact.  Now, in my desperation, I was wondering if it was okay to cross out the last part of the prayer, because in my mind, the only way I was going to have peace was if I found my jewelry.  Nonetheless, I prayed the whole prayer and I did not find my jewelry.  And I did not find peace right away, but surprisingly, I came to peace about the losses much more quickly than I thought I would.  Sometimes I Thank God for Unanswered Prayers has always been one of my favorite country songs and I think it applies here.

I often lecture my family about the dangers of getting too attached to “things.”  “We are not even going to leave this world with our bodies!” is a statement I’ve been known to say more than a few times.  For the record, that goes over like a lead balloon.  Thanks, Debbie Downer, any other uplifting anecdotes you’d like to pass on while we eat our dessert???  The truth is, I haven’t found a better way to say it, but the “things” in life are temporary and fleeting.  Change is always happening and the suffering occurs when we can’t make peace with this fact.  A lot of spiritual teachers (and marketing experts, for that matter) like to say that when we want something or someone, it’s not really the item that we want, it is the feeling that we believe we will get if we possess that thing.  I believed that I would feel extreme “relief” if I found my jewelry and obviously, I was looking for “relief” from a lot of the tumult that was swirling around in my heart.  And a lot of that tumult had nothing to do with my jewelry.

Native Americans were very thankful to the buffalo that they consumed.  They used every part of the buffalo and thanked it profusely for it’s blessing and it’s sacrifice.  Marie Kondo, the Japanese organization guru says that when you know that it is time to give up an item, you thank it for what it has brought to you and ask it to bless someone else.  I am thankful for my jewelry, for the times I felt lovely wearing the pieces, but I think I may even be more thankful for the loss of the items, because the lessons I gleaned from the losses will stay with me forever.  I hope that wherever they are now, they are blessing someone else in all of the best ways possible.