Iris Apfel

“I love high-end designers, but a head-to-toe designer look for me is extremely boring. I've always mixed it up.”

“Understated jewellery is not for me. It's too itsy-bitsy. My husband is lucky, as I've never had a yen for real jewels.”

“Great personal style is an extreme curiosity about yourself.”

“I'm happy. I give thanks every morning that I can get up, that I still have my husband with me. I'm extremely grateful. After all, how many 93-year-old cover girls do you know?”

“I never had to look for confidence because I just wore what I wanted to wear. I would never wear anything to offend my husband or my mother, but outside of that, I always figured, I hope I'm not a rebel, and I hope everybody liked it. And if they didn't like it, it really was not going to disturb me because it was their problem, not mine.”

“You can't try to be somebody you're not; that's not style. If someone says, 'Buy this - you'll be stylish,' you won't be stylish because you won't be you. You have to learn who you are first, and that's painful.”

“You can change the look of an outfit so easily by changing the kind of jewellery you wear. If you have a basic outfit on - a black sweater and skirt or a simple black dress - you can go from the office to a cocktail party at night just by changing your jewellery. It helps if you change your shoes as well.”

“I'm from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions - very primitive.”

“I hate being asked how I met my husband and very personal questions like that. I don't like that. People are too nosey. Intelligent questions I like, but sometimes people ask such silly, dopey ones.”

“We did major work at the White House. But what people often don't understand is that when you do a historic restoration, you can't just do whatever you want. You work alongside the fine-arts commission and are obliged to create a replica of the past, as close as humanly possible. It's a historic institution, not a showhouse.”

“I call myself a geriatric starlet.”

“Clothes are not frippery. Properly done, they can be an art form.”

“I don't do very much for beauty. I use very simple things on my skin. I haven't got time. I would always get facials and then come home laden with product, and pay a lot of money and never use it. Anyway, one day a dermatologist told me to use Cetaphil to clean my face and as a moisturizer, and that's what I do.”

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

“Colour can raise the dead.”

“I'm not out to preach. I just live my own life. I'm very happy if I can help somebody - that's wonderful. But it's up to them what they want to think about it or what they want to take away; it's their business, not mine.”

“People say, 'You have inspired me, you've given me courage...' They've gone so far as to say, 'You've changed my life!' And I would come back and say to my husband, 'I can't understand it - what kind of poor little life did she have if I had to come and change it?'”

“I'm a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it's valuable.”

“I don't look at Instagram. I don't have much to do with social media.”

“Nobody is original anymore. Nobody has any original style.”