Iris

"'Iris' serves as a spirited, often dazzling primer in how to fight the dying of the light and feel fabulous while doing it." - Washington Post

"The penultimate film of documentarian Albert Maysles — he also shot In Transit aboard a Chicago-to-Seattle train before passing away in March at the age of 88 — does not feature his most famous subject; few outside the New York fashion scene will know the name Iris Apfel. But it’s a fitting almost-finale, looking at a life lived to the fullest and still going strong. Apfel is 93.

"She’s also cocky and opinionated, the very model of a New Yorker. When people express surprise that she’s still alive, she tells them she’s “walking around to save funeral expenses.” Asked when she developed that attitude, she replies: 'I can’t remember that far back.'

"The film follows her and Carl, her husband of almost 70 years. 'He was cool and he was cuddly and he cooked Chinese, so I couldn’t do any better,' she says simply of their union. Archival photos and home movies show them jet-setting around the world from just after jets had been invented.

"Her sense of style and design is polyglottal, stretching from New York’s boroughs to the far side of the Earth. She credits her mom with telling her to buy a little black dress; notes that she kept her wedding shoes on the assumption that everything will come back into style if you give it long enough; and claims to have been the first woman to wear jeans in the 1940s. I don’t know if I believe that last claim, but I won’t fight her on it.

"Apfel is an expert haggler, and proud of it, pointing out that you’ll ruin a shopkeeper’s day if he asks for $50 and you give it to him, because then he’ll know he could have asked for $100.

"Her celebrity clients include generations of White House dwellers. 'We had a problem with Jackie,' Carl starts to say, but Iris shushes him. She’s happy to talk about her storied life, but it’s clear there are some secrets she’ll take with her. Maysles doesn’t press the point; even the greatest documentarians know there are places you don’t go." - National Post.

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