Iris Apfel discussion at Sotheby's

Last night Sotheby's hosted a conversation with Veranda editor-in-chief Dara Caponigro and style legend and Old World Weavers' founder Iris Apfel. "A Conversation About Style and Design" was part of the inaugural lecture series to benefit the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club in partnership with Hearst Design Group. This year's show house, at the Aldyn on Riverside Boulevard, runs through June 14th. Two lectures remain in the series: tomorrow at 11am, Miles Redd will present "Fashion and Inspiration in Interior Design" and on Tuesday, June 5, Tom Savage will present "Addicted to Old Houses: Iconic Rooms and Influential Interiors." Click here for more information and to register. Cost is $75 each.


Caponigro, John Rosselli and Apfel

Apfel is a veteran storyteller and last night she was in fine form. She kicked off with a story from when she was eight years old and wanted to style a look based on ballerina Isabella Duncan, in anticipation of a visit to a photographer's studio. But there was no chiffon in the house, so "I improvised with cheesecloth! I looked like an amateur sculptor had worked me in clay, got bored and walked away, and I topped it off with a head full of corkscrew curls! I looked god-awful, but that was the first time I thought, 'What difference does it make as long as I like it."


Caponigro and Apfel with Christopher Spitzmiller

Another hit, "My father did a lot of mirror work and he was hired by Elsie de Wolff at a time when he was very busy with other projects, so he took her job on, under the condition that he could do the work on Sundays and bring me along. She spent Sundays in bed and she was always wearing a beautiful Sable bed jacket. I learned it was a Sears & Roebuck jacket she had brought to furrier Maximillian to copy. She would receive me in her 18th century French boudoir, and she always had her French poodle with her, whom I thought she had dipped in indigo. I never realized what an influence she had on me." On her book, Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel, a catalog of her idiosyncratic style, she said, "I feel like a great sponge, full of influences, and it was only in writing the book that I feel like someone just wrung me out."

All photographs by Annie Watt.