Iris Apfel

Fashion has this youth mania. But 70-year-old ladies don't have 18-year-old bodies, and 18-year-olds don't have a 70-year-old's dollars.

Fashion really is women's liberation in a lot of ways. Look at how many women in this country are depressed about how they look and how they think they have to look! It's really sad. And it's not about money.

Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who you want to be.

I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing.

In my view, you can't go to the future if you haven't come from the past.

I don't happen to approve of plastic surgery. I think God put plastic surgeons on this earth for good reasons - people get burned or people might have a nose like Pinocchio and that has to be fixed. But to just chop yourself up to look a few years younger? You could come out looking like a Picasso picture.

Aging gracefully is about no heavy makeup, and not too much powder because it gets into the wrinkles, and, you know, to not get turtle eyelids and to not try to look young.

I wasn't interested at all in doing a documentary. I was not a public figure.

There's different shopping in Paris than there is at a bazaar in Istanbul, but they're all wonderful.

I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate.

People with a lot of money don't dress as well as people who have to make do, who have to be inventive. Those are the people who are always more interestingly dressed, I think. Everything I do, I do with gut instinct. If I think too much, it won't come out right.

In America, it has been proven that the bulk of spending money is in the hands of women between 60 and 80, so it's so stupid. The people who do have the time and money to shop are either retired or empty-nesters.